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BURTON'S BOOK 



BURTON'S BOOK 



ON 



California and Its Sunlit Skies 

of Glory 



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BY G. W. BURTON 



SECOND THOUSAND 



1909 

Times-Mirror Prinring and Binding House 

Los Angeles, California 

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COPYRIGHTED 

BY THE AUTHOR 

1909 






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INTRODUCTION 



THE main purpose in offering to the public the pages that follow is to make 
known to readers outside of CaHfornia the attractiveness and beneficial 
effects of life inside of this Golden State. After more than a quarter of 
a century of newspaper work in the State, many readers of the "copy" produced 
by the author at frequent intervals suggested the publication of some of it in book 
form. 

Yielding to these suggestions, the author collected the best things he had to 
offer, and about the beginning of the current year undertook to test the sincerity 
of the admiration expressed by his friends. They stood the test in a manner which 
the author hopes will not add to his conceit, but will make everlastingly permanent 
his deep sense of gratitude for the depth and firmness of this friendship. To express 
it in exact terms is to state that in three months he sold the whole first edition of 
1000 copies, and when the matter went to press about the end of March every 
book had been subscribed for. The author acted as his own book agent, and 
during the three months never went outside of the corporate limits of the city of 
Los Angeles. 

The name given this book requires more apology than the matter itself. It 
came in a perfectly natural way. Friends who had subscribed for a copy met 
others on the street and said, "Have you heard of Burton's book?" So one of 
the nearest and best friends of the author caught the inspiration and named the 
book for him. 

To those abroad who shall read the pages here offered and think there is a 
little too warm admiration expressed for "California and its sunlit skies of glory" 
the following quotation from a little talk made in January of this year before the 
Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association of Los Angeles at an annual banquet 
is offered, not as an excuse, but as an explanation for the author's love of his 
adopted State: 

"I have lived in the State of California nearly all the time for the last forty- 
three years and of all these, thirty-five or more of them were spent here in Southern 
California, nearly all of them in Los Angeles - on this most fruitful of all soils, 
under these most brilliant skies of glory that shine upon the earth from pole to pole, 
from the meridian of Greenwich or that of Washington, around the equator to the 
place of beginning. My comment upon- this important fact is that life here on these 
flower-decked mesas, beneath the shadows of these purple mountains, by the rippling 
music of these turquoise seas, among good people like these gathered around us here 
tonight, has been to me a more valuable asset than all the millions our friend John 
D. Rockefeller ever became possessed of, not to mention the millions the United 
States tried to fine him, but seems to have met with a little debacle in that enter- 
prise. To make this more plain, let me say that forty-three years ago in June I 
had undergone an examination by three physicians. I hope there is not a doctor 



vi INTRODUCTION. 

in this assembly tonight and that not one of the disciples of Aesculapius, Hip- 
pocrates, or any other of the ancient medicos will read a word that I say upon this 
head. All three of these eminent physicians pronounced me a clear-gone case of 
pulmonary consumption, unable to weather two winters, if even one, in Wisconsin; 
that my only hope for half a dozen years beneath the glimpses of the moon depended 
on my making quick progress toward California. I was examined the other day 
by the modern appliance of the X-rays, which is definite and specific, and not 
experimental. The revelation made by this exact science is that I now possess at 
this advanced stage of life not merely two lungs, but three, and all entirely sound. 

"My occupation during the greater part of these many years under these sunlit 
skies of glory has been that of newspaper writer. I don't mean newspaper editor, 
the fellow that prevents a good thing from ever getting into the columns of a public 
print, but the writer who furnishes all the good things that do manage to get in. 
My newspaper career began, and has mostly continued for a period of a full gen- 
eration of the leaves that fall from the human tree of knowledge, among business 
men like yourselves. I consider this, next to my long sojourn under the beautiful 
skies and amid the healthful breezes, as being my greatest asset in life. It has 
kept my heart sweet, my conscience clean, and my head clear. My first news- 
paper work was on a trade paper which brought me into close contact with whole- 
sale grocers, wholesale druggists, wholesale iron men, drygoods men, and all the 
various great manufacturing enterprises and mercantile concerns of the Pacific Coast. 
From that time to this, while I have reported dog fights, cock fights, church ice- 
cream parties and church conventions, as well as political conventions, police courts, 
autopsies in cases of murder and other grewsome scenes, my steady occupation, 
daily diet in doing newspaper work has been among bankers, manufacturers, mer- 
chants and business men of various kinds." 

With these apologies or explanatory remarks, the book is given to the world. 
And yet one more plea for indulgence is offered. The writer of what follows, at 
70 years of age, is engaged in the exacting and strenuous duty of producing "copy" 
every day for The Times newspaper. Every article in the book was written under 
the exigencies of laborious newspaper work. The copy has been prepared for the 
press without one day's vacation from the duties of his position. He is an old 
man, of old-fashioned ideas. He offers to the public no "FOREWORD," but 
an old-fashioned "INTRODUCTION." It may be found lacking in many things 
considered "down to date," but he hopes there will be at least some things which 
will not be considered lacking in the elements of being "up to date." If errors, 
slips of various kinds, shall be found in the following pages, the critic is begged 
to consider the circumstances under which the book sees the light and to dull in a 
small degree at least the sharp point of his caustic pencil. 

One more thing. The articles appear as they were written. The color and 
inspiration of the moment are thus preserved. For the time and place the con- 
text is relied on. 

Those who know many books will find familiar thoughts in this one. It is 
all newspaper work written on the spur of the moment. The author makes no 
pretense to originality of thought. An omniverous reader for sixty years he could 
not always give proper credit for his views. Many of the essays indicate to the 
reader where the inspiration came from. 



BURTON'S BOOK 



ON CALIFORNIA 



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TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

The Grand Canyon 1 

The Yosemite 7 

Yellowstone Park 12 

Salt Lake City 20 

Land of Beauty 26 

Pomona and Roundabout 30 

Will Crown Again Her Splendid Hills 35 

Possibilities of the West 37 

September Golden Days of Glory 41 

California Today and Tomorrow 43 

The Development of One Generation 45 

June Roses, June Brides 47 

The Call of the Coast 51 

The Good Old Summertime 53 

A Land of Gold 55 

A City Rich in Resources 59 

Springtime in California 63 

Vacation and Freedom, Breezes and Pines 65 

The West 66 

The Equinox in Southern California 68 

A Great School Center 70 

California's Greatest, Most Lasting Asset 71 

The New Beulah Land 73 

Summer Climate of Southern California 75 

Summer in California .' 77 

The Sea! The Sea! 79 

City in Country 81 

Midsummer Melody 82 

The Lands by Sunlit Seas 83 

Sunny Hours, the Thrush's Song, the Sheen of Poppy Fields ^ . . 85 

La Cote D'Azure 85 

Oh, to Live for the Days A-Coming! 89 

Where No Rock Its Shadow Throws 91 

Sick and Homeless 93 

The CaHfornia Farmer 95 

To Live Long and See Good Days 97 

Dickens's West and Roosevelt's West 99 

The Call of the Heights 102 

The Great San Joaquin Valley 103 

Promise of the Foothills 107 

Westward, Ho! 110 

Did Not See the Flowers, Anyway 113 



X CONTENTS, '■ 

PAGE 

Tourist Tooting 114 

It is Spring in California 116 

Climate as an Asset 118 

Possibilities Unfathomed 1 20 

The Reunion City 126 

Look into the Future 129 

Land Values on Sound Basis 133 

Citrus Fruits in California 1 39 

Banking in Los Angeles 1 46 

Where Everlasting Spring Abides 154 

May in Santa Cruz 155 

Chamber of Commerce Statistics 157 




THROUGH THE PINE FOREST, MT. WILSON, CALIFORNIA. 



BURTON'S BOOK 



The Grand Canyon 



SKYWARD on the great uplift of the North American continent, where Utah, 
Nevada and Arizona join, is a broad tableland, part desert, part forest, 
6000 to I 0,000 feet above sea level, and tens of thousands of square miles 
in extent. 

Here is the Grand Caiion of the Colorado, one of the most stupendous natural 
wonders of the globe. It is an enormous chasm, 2 I 7 miles long, which splits the 
uplift to within 1 000 feet of sea level. Take any section of a few miles in extent, 
and it would be impossible to match this in the Alps, or probably in the Andes or 
Himalayas. The Grand Caiion does not tower up, but splits the earth to its 
foundations from beneath the feet of the beholder. Its vast extent, 2 1 7 miles ; its 
profound depths, 5000 to 7000 feet; its tortuous labyrinthine windings; its com- 
plicated systems of gorge within gorge, chasm beneath chasm, and its multiform 
shapes, as well as gorgeous colorings, are matchless on the earth, and indescribable 
by tongue, however eloquent, by pen, however ready, or by brush in the hand of 
artist, however skilled or gifted. 

Dante's inferno might suggest something of this great rift in the earth crust 
were it not that there is nothing but the opposite of gloomy in the Grand Caiion. 
Its various fantastic forms, its warm coloring, its limpid air and its weird spirit 
attract, entice, charm, enchant, entrance the mind. 

On this mountain height the sun's rays in midsummer gild the crags by 4 
o'clock a.m. I was out with the first rays, and as I stepped from the door of the 
hotel there lay this weird wonder of the world. 

A step or two would take the beholder over the sheer precipice at his feet. 
Leaning over the fence on the rim, I gazed into that marvelous creation of geologic 
eras. The government plate at my foot registered 6866 feet above sea-level. I 
knew the opposite rim was fifteen miles from where I stood. I knew that, although 
invisible, a swift and powerful stream, the Colorado River, rolled through the 
Granite Gorge out there, seemingly so near. A clearer air never lay upon any 
scene, and this aids the vast spaces before the eye in creating an optical delusion 
as to distances. As I stood, a stranger leaned on the fence by my side and said: 
"I wonder what that white spot is in the green down yonder?" 

Turning to the speaker, I said: "It looks like a newspaper thrown on the 
grass." 

A good-natured laugh came back, as the stranger said: "Oh, you are too 
easy! That white 'speck' is made of two tents; a spread of canvas ten by forty 
feet, and the 'grass' is a mass of willows half a mile wide and several miles long. 
They stand twenty feet above the plain where they grow." 



2 BURTON'S BOOK. 

Turning my field glasses on the canon for the first time, the tents stood out 
in their true Hght. But the willows were only low brush in appearance. The 
trail along which sightseers travel, five or six feet wide, in fact, looked to the eye 
like a slender thread; seen through the powerful glass, it was like the path of a 
large snake through the dust. The crag on whose top we stood was sheer as the 
wall of a house. This section of the gorge was four miles wide at its mouth, two 
miles wide where we stood, and the tents were half a mile from its base below us. 
They lay 4000 feet below our level. 

What is called the Indian Garden, stretched from the willows northward, an 
area of hundreds of acres, but in appearance a mere garden. At the edge of this 
sunken plateau ran a dark streak, as if of adobe clay, two or three feet wide. 
That was in fact the celebrated Granite Gorge, a trough 1000 feet wide at the 
top, 1 300 feet deep from the Indian Garden, as perpendicular as a wall, and at 
its bottom rolled the yellow tide of the Colorado, 300 feet wide, fifty feet deep 
in midchannel, and as swift as a millrace, with swirling eddies and tumultuous 
rapids along its course. 

We were standing nearly 7000 feet above sea-level; in that dark gorge the 
river rushed seaward only 1 000 feet above tidewater at the mouth of the great 
river below Yuma, at the head of the Gulf of California. 

It had come 600 miles from where the Green River and the Grand make the 
Colorado. It was hastening 600 miles more to join its native sea, having drawn 
its inspiration and supply from the snow-crowned heights of the Rocky Mountains, 
half way across the continent. This part of the Grand Canon is midway in the 
course of the Colorado, and almost midway in the length of the titanic scar on the 
brow of the world. 

All one can do is to make comparisons to aid the mind in grasping the stupen- 
dous heights, depths and spaces he is gazing on. Place the Washington Monument 
in the stream at the bottom of the Granite Gorge and its top will not reach much 
more than one-third of the way up to the level of the Indian Garden Plateau. 
Place the great pyramid of Egypt in the river and the Washington Monument on 
its apex, and their combined height will require the aid of the tallest church steeple 
in Christendom to appear above the rim of the gorge, and then the cross on top of 
the spire will be 4000 feet below the rim of the canon at Bright Angel Hotel. 

The line that would reach perpendicularly to the river is out five miles from 
the hotel. The northern rim of the canon is ten miles further than the imaginary 
line let down perpendicularly into the river. From the hotel to the opposite rim 
is fifteen miles, as far as from the Courthouse clock tower in Los Angeles to the 
beach at Santa Monica. 

Standing on O' Neil's Point, three or four miles west of the hotel, the canon 
stretches thirty-five miles in full view westward toward the San Francisco Mountain 
range, ninety miles away, and towering into the clouds. Facing eastward the canon 
runs in that direction thirty-five miles more in plain view. 

Seventy miles of this vast gorge, so profound, so wide, so full of fantastic 
forms, of vivid color, of grotesque carvings! Yes, seventy miles, and that is but 
one-third of its full extent. Eastward and westward its labyrinths still cut the 
earth thousands of feet in limestone, sandstone, granite and gneiss, and through all 
this 2 1 7 miles the great river is still graving its channel deeper and deeper, and 
winds and storm still carve new shapes on the faces of the crags as they have done 
for millions of years, dating back to eras before the first articulate speaking man 
raised his awe-stricken face to heaven as he gazed for the first time on this wonder 
of the primeval world. 



THE GRAND CANYON. 3 

The vastness of the caiion is only one of its striking features. As it is today 
the topmost layer, 1 000 to 2000 feet thick, is composed of limestone, some of 
which is reduced almost to chalk. The next layer, 500 or 1000 feet thick, is a 
white sandstone, easily worn away by winds and storms. The third layer going 
down is a red sandstone, in places 2000 feet thick, somewhat harder than the over- 
lying layers. 

Then come the granite and the gneiss, hard as adamant, 1 000 to I 300 feet 
thick, to the river bed. The Granite Gorge is not above 1200 to I 300 feet thick. 
It is hardly 1000 feet wide at the top and 300 to 500 feet wide at the bottom. 
It is almost perpendicular. But the lime and sandstone above are five to fifteen miles 
wide and cut and worn into a most wonderful variety of shapes. They lie in lay- 
ers as even as bricks in a wall. They vary in color from a dull white to a red as 
bright as a blaze in a clear fire. They seem the work of Titans' hands. 




BRIGHT ANGEL TRAIL, GRAND CANYON. 



4 BURTON'S BOOK. 

Tourists have attempted to give names to these fantastic forms. There are 
the "Battleship Oregon" and the "Temple of Isis," and the "Tomb of Cleopatra." 
Were the space occupied by the "battleship" scooped out it would form a harbor 
large enough to hold the American Navy. Were the "temple" hollowed out, with 
galleries surrounding it, all the people of California might worship within it. But 
the priest who served at the altar, were he Stentor himself and armed with a mega- 
phone, could not make his voice heard through half the vast edifice. If the "tomb" 
were excavated all the dead dynasties of Egypt might sleep in its vast spaces. 

These various forms graven here by stream, by winds and rains, present in 
places the appearance of great amphitheaters, in which the wild beasts of the pri- 
meval world might have fought while the Titans filled the seats as spectators. 
There are fortress-like creations as if here the Titans had tried to storm heaven and 
dethrone Jupiter. Salient angles jut out one to three miles from the main wall. 
Flying buttresses spring a thousand feet into the air. There are reentrant angles 
that cut the mountain half in two. Great bastions frown from towering heights 
as if to defy demons from the pit. Escarpments are cut which the very gods could 
not scale. As light and shadow play upon these countless and fantastic forms, 
while the sun creeps around from his rising to his decline, the gorges look like im- 
mense kaleidoscopes, colors and shapes changing like scenes on some vast stage, 
bewildering the mind alike by their variety, their vastness, their beauty of coloring 
and boldness of carving. The whole area of the city of Los Angeles might be put 
in one of these amphitheaters. 

To reach the top of one of these bastions the highest building in Los Angeles 
would have to be multiplied by three, by five, by seven. One moment the facade 
is lurid in the shadows; the next it burns like a corner of Tophet or Phlegethon as 
the sun strikes full upon its face. 

Yet all this is only a remnant of what the canon was in past geologic eras. 
It once towered 1 0,000 feet above where it is now, at Bright Angel trail. The 
storms of eons have ground down the mountain top and the wild swirl of gigantic 
streams has carried the detritus seaward, "the seeds of continents to be." But 
long before these eras the place where the caiion is was a vast lake. From the top 
of the Rocky Mountains the glaciers and storms washed down the sediment which 
deposited in a vast trough laid the red sandstone upon the granite which had been 
upheaved in some great seismic disturbance of the primeval world. The white 
sandstone came next and then the limestone. While this last deposit was in a soft 
and plastic shape there were volcanoes in active eruption far away, perhaps in the 
San Francisco Mountains, and volcanic showers fell in the limestone, where it is 
imbedded now in small knots as hard as iron. 

In time the sedimentary deposits hardened into their present forms. They 
had made the lake a tableland 20,000 feet and more above sea-level. Then came 
the action of the stream, cutting its way seaward. Century followed century. The 
river bed cut rapidly into the limestone and white sandstone. In the red sandstone 
the work was slower, and then the granite was reached. Here it took a century 
and more to wear away the thickness of an inch. 

It is a long time back to Washington and the American Revolution. It is 
four times as long back to Columbus and the discovery of the New World. It 
is 1 000 years to the battle of Hastings and the Norman conquest in England. 
It is twice as long back to Caesar and the Roman conquest. The Colorado River is 
today as it was then. The features of the Grand Caiion have not changed. Be- 



THE GRAND CANYON. 5 

neath the sands of the Nile lies a civilization I 0,000, perhaps 20,000, years old. 
The Colorado and the Granite Gorge are today as they were when the first founda- 
tions of that lost civilization were laid. 

So vast are the geologic eras which have passed while the Grand Canon has 
been forming that the pendulum of the clock that measures time in the Granite Gorge 
has not swung once through its arc since the first human being looked into its won- 
derful depths. 

I was there one Sunday morning. Before daylight I went down Bright Angel 
trail alone on foot. Every two steps took me down very nearly one foot into the 
chasm. The limestone cliffs began to tower above me, the sandstone gorges began 
to yawn beneath my feet. Still down I went until the limestone was all above me, 
and I was among the sandstone. The sun was up and firing the red sandstone a 
burning red, while it brought the myriad shapes out into clear relief. At places 
masses of limestone in layers hundreds of feet in thickness and larger than whole 
blocks of six-story buildings stretching from street to street, hung above my head. 
Huge pines grew along the slopes to right and left. The white sandstone in gaping 
chasms lay below. 

Still further down the red sandstone in amphitheaters, in bastions, escarpments 
and flying buttresses, gleamed bright in the sun. Then I began to realize the gran- 
deur of this great wonder of the world. A sense of overpowering awe comes over 
the soul. The mind becomes oppressed with awfulness. One's knees begin to 
shrink as if in the presence of incomprehensible powers. One's head is bent low 
in involuntary reverence before an unseen presence whose almighty hand is felt to 
have been impressed on every feature of the surroundings. 

And yet I was looking upon only one small corner of a natural wonder 2 I 7 
miles long and fifteen miles wide where I stood. I could see only one-third of the 
way down even in this one little corner of the Grand Canon. Where I stood was 



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SUNRISE ON THE GRAND CANYON. 



BURTON'S BOOK. 




COLORADO RIVER IN THE GRAND CANYON. 



level ground compared with the sheer precipice of the Granite Gorge, which lay out 
there beyond the Indian Garden 1 300 feet in the primeval rock and so steep that 
reptile life cannot scale its walls. 

The Valley of Chamouni had Samuel Taylor Coleridge to put in sublime 
verse a poet's impression of its grandeur. When will arise the American poet to 
do some measure of justice to the grandeur, the coloring, the fantastic carvings, the 
gigantic architecture and the charm upon the mind of the Grand Canon of the 
Colorado? 




EL TOVAR HOTEL, GRAND CANYON. 



THE YOSEMITE. 



The Yosemite 



LORY over me! I have seen Yosemite. Never were such wonders seen 
on earth elsewhere. The apostle was "caught up into the third heav- 
ens" and saw things his tongue could not describe. Did he have a glimpse 
of the wonderful Valley? Human language is an evolution of human experience, 
and words are fitted to express thoughts which are the outgrowth of usual experi- 
ences. By the most natural reasoning it is plain that words will not describe scenes 
so unusual as those which strike the vision in this sublime mountain gorge, the only 
thing of its kind ever seen by human eyes. 

At Berenda, where we left the main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad, 
the ascent from the plains begins in low, rolling hills partly covered with a small 
growth of oaks. A spur of twenty-four miles leads to Raymond, where staging 
begins. From here to Ahwahnee the hills become more billowy and the growth of 
timber larger. It is twenty-two miles between the two points. After luncheon at 
Ahwahnee the journey up the mountains proper begins. The timber is larger and 
covers nearly the whole landscape, while flowers of a thousand hues brighten the 
prospect. The road here leads to an elevation of about 5000 feet, then plunges 
down a thousand and brings you to Wawona, twenty-two miles more. The proper 
thing is to take in the Mariposa Big Trees from here. Spend the whole day in 
the grove, and get your first inspiring view from Wawona Point into the valley, 
3000 feet below, where the hotel looks like a dog kennel and the great trees like 
small bushes. The woods to the Big Trees and along this road to the valley are 
magnificent in their proportions and entrancing in their beauty. The pines and firs 
reach to a height of 150 to 250 feet, and the undergrowth is a dazzHng succession 
of wild azaleas, godesias, Mariposa Hlies, snow flowers and numerous other varieties 
of flowers. The staging through these woods, gay with all the colors of the rain- 
bow, redolent of the pine, and sombre with shade or streaked with sunlight through 
the trees, is a delight from morning to night. It is enchanting all day long, and 
would in itself justify the trip to the mountains. The trails present scenes of even 
greater grandeur and of more exquisite beauty. These trails are wide, solid, safe 
paths leading up wide caiions, skirting by headlong precipices and winding to seem- 
ingly inaccessible heights, which make all but the steadiest head giddy for a moment 
at the first glance into the profound depths below. 

The peaks would pierce the clouds if there were any in these clear heights, 
where the vapors of the plains and the dust of the world are things unknown. 
Slowly the grandeur of the scenes will impress your mind more and more deeply. 
Take a little stroll to the foot of the lower Yosemite Falls. Drink in the beauty 
of the valley, like a park studded with fine trees, carpeted with ferns, musical with 
clear streams. "Eat the air," the purest and most invigorating you ever breathed. 
Go to the foot of Bridal Veil Falls and see the rainbows play upon the feathery 
curtain of water at sunset. Stand at the foot of El Capitan and get an imperfect 
but awe-inspiring impression of its immensity. Next go up to Eagle Point, or 
Yosemite Point, and take a general view of the valley. Coming down, stop at the 
foot of the Upper Falls and see a thousand rainbows at one glance. Go next day 



8 



BURTON'S BOOK. 



to Mirror Lake and see the sun rise, go up the trail to Glacier Point, passing 
the Vernal and Nevada Falls, and go out by Chinquapin to Wawona. On this 
route by stage, you ascend to a height of 8 1 00 feet above sea-level and pass 
through fields of snow in mid- June. The woods on this stretch of road are the 
finest outside the big trees. There are trips to Cloud's Rest and many other points 
still wilder, grander, more inspiring. You would not exhaust the wonders in a 
month. 

It is easy to set down figures. But how imperfect impressions they convey 
of what they stand for. It is easy to write that the Mariposa Big Tree Park con- 
tains over 2500 acres; that there are in all 621 specimens of the Sequoia gigantea in 
the park; that one of these fallen giants is 26 feet in diameter and 300 feet long; 
that a troop of cavalry has been photographed on the trunk, also a six-horse stage; 
that one tree is 104 feet in circumference four feet above the ground, and has a 




Y03EMITE FALLS. 



THE YOSEMITE. 9 

branch 20J/2 feet in circumference 100 feet from the ground, the height of the tree 
being 224 feet; that the tallest of these trees is 323 feet in height. It is easy to 
write that Bridal Veil Falls is 940 feet. Sentinel Falls 3270 feet, Yosemite Falls 
2600 feet, the upper fall being 1 600 feet in one straight plunge. Ribbon Falls 
3300 feet without a break. So with the peaks. Cathedral Rock is 2600 feet. 
Cathedral Spires 700 feet above this; Sentinel Dome, 4125 feet; Half Dome, 
5000 feet; Mount Star King, 5100 feet; Cloud Rest, 6000 feet. These 
measurements are above the floor of the valley, which is 4000 feet above sea level. 
So with superficies, the two faces of El Capitan are equal to 500 acres. The 
most regular face is 1 60 acres, and is more than perpendicular, for the apex over- 
hangs the base by nearly 100 feet. 

But these figures do not convey any clear impression to the mind. The living 
eye must gaze upon these heights and depths. The living soul must stand, awe- 
inspired, before them, and absorb the mexpressible grandeur of the scenes. Even 
the beauty of the valley below these stupendous cliffs, watered by cool, clear 
streams that come from such dizzy heights, cannot be described in words. Each 
eye must photograph the scene; each soul take the impress for itself. 

Many have tried to describe Yosemite. Richardson, in "Beyond the Mis- 
sissippi," essayed the task. Horace Greeley attempted it. Many since, the most 
graphic writers of the world, have tried to do the impossible. Each must see for 
himself. No words can convey the impressions from mind to mind. One lifts 
his eyes involuntarily to the heavens and exclaims as the psalmist did, "O God, 
how wonderful are Thy works! In wisdom hast Thou made them all." Yes, 
one is constrained to raise his hands to heaven and say, "Oh, my Father, how 
glorious, how wonderful, how beautiful is this world Thou hast made as an abode 
for Thy children ! I thank Thee that I have seen this wondrous production of 
Thy hands!" And what a sense of littleness, of insignificant nothingness, presses 
upon the soul and forces one again to quote the royal poet of Israel and say: 
"What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?" 

Prof. Jordan estimates that the oldest of the sequoias is at least 7000 years 
old. The least age assigned to it is 5000 years. It was a giant when the 
Hebrew Patriarchs were keeping sheep. It was a sapling when the first seeds 
of human civilization were germinating on the banks of the Euphrates and of the 
Nile. It had attained its full growth before the apostles went forth to spread the 
Christian rehgion. It began to die before William of Normandy won the battle 
of Hastings. It has been dying for a thousand years. And unless some accident 
comes to it, it will hardly be entirely dead a thousand years from now. It has 
seen the birth, growth and decay of all the generations and tribes and nations 
of civilized men. It will see the birth and decay of many more generations. It is 
the oldest living thing on the face of the earth. In its youth and prime its kind 
covered continents. It stands now among the last remains of its kind. It is the 
most precious relic of the primeval earth. Twenty of us stood around it and 
clasped hands in a great circle at the base. It seemed to me like an embrace of 
love bestowed by humanity on this giant relic of long-gone ages, an embrace of 
this silent witness to all the vicissitudes of human kind during the lapse of these 
long ages. 

I stood at the base of El Capitan and looked up the face of this sheer height, 
whose top looks over mountains and plains upon the sea, 7300 feet below — a mile 
and a half, nearly — and on the floor of the beautiful valley 3300 feet below. 
The one face where I stood, if laid horizontal to the earth, would cover a farm of 



10 



BURTON'S BOOK. 




1 60 acres, four of forty acres, eight of twenty acres, sixteen of ten, thirty-two of 
five acres each, 160 building sites of an acre each; or, if cut into ordinary city 
lots, it would make room for 800 homes, where a city of 4000 people might dwell. 
I went to the top of Yosemite Falls and saw a stream of fifty feet in width and 
five deep, rapid as a millrace, plunge 1 600 feet in one leap, then slide 600 feet in 
cascades, and plunge another 500 feet into the valley. I stood below Vernal Falls, 
where a much larger stream leaps sheer 350 feet in one plunge and never touches 
the wall of rock behind. I saw the stream, reassembled, rush between tree-clad 
slopes, in foam, into a deep lake as green as the foliage above. I stood above the 
mighty Nevada Falls to see a great river eighty feet wide and of immense depth 
plunge in a headlong leap of over 500 feet, and never until then did I realize what 
the Apocalypse meant when it speaks of "The voice of many waters." 

I stood upon Glacier Point and saw the Half Dome, resting on a veritable 
mountain, spring from its immeasurable base of rock and rise, massive as a world, 
regular as the product of artistic hands, 2000 feet from the base, which is 3000 
feet above the valley, which is 4000 feet above the sea, the snow on its brow 9000 
feet above sea-level. Below lay the valley, like a garden, through the midst of 
which runs the Merced River, a ribbon of green through bowers of green. On 
the left plunged down in thunder Yosemite Falls; in front fell, with the diapason 
of a thousand thunders, the Nevada Falls, and below them the Vernal Falls. The 
other side of Half Dome lay beautiful Mirror Lake, a lovely thing of enchantment, 
and to the right lay Happy Isles, another abode of fairy sprites. And as I gazed 
on the Cap of Liberty, Washington Column, Columbia Column, the Sentinel Peaks, 
Cathedral Spires, Clouds' Rest, Mount Star King, and off among leagues of snowy 
peaks Mount Lyell, the highest point of all, my soul yearned for a thousand organs, 
the most powerful on earth, a choir of a hundred thousand well-trained voices, men, 



THE YOSEMITE. 11 

women and children, to yoke a small section of one of the falls to a dynamo for 
power, and with a pine like the "Mast of some tall Admiral," operated by ma- 
chinery, as a baton to beat time, turn loose all the deepest diapasons of these instru- 
ments in the woods below, on the heights above, and around them lift in unison the 
voice of this choral army, which should sing a Te Deum or a Gloria in Excelsis. 
As the hymn rose up to fill the valley, to join with the roar of the mighty waters, 
and to soar above Mount Lyell, "Glory to God in the Highest" would begin to 
express the feelings inspired by the wonderful scenes of majestic grandeur above, 
set around the scenes of inexpressible loveliness below. 

From Glacier Point to the north, in the upper end of the valley, lay Mirror 
Lake. We had visited this in the morning. It was after seven o'clock before the 
sun rose above the heights, and its first rays fell in the pellucid pool, still as if of steel. 

Such photography is seen nowhere else as here. Every rocky point, every 
branch on the trees, the people on the shore, each most minute object, from the 
broad base of the mountains to their topmost pinnacle, is here reproduced below 
the water in inverted form, but with a faithfulness of detail such as no brush, no 
pencil, no camera of man's device or using ever equaled. As the sun crept up the 
heights his brilliancy lent enchantment to the scene below, the surface of the beau- 
tiful sheet of water, the edges of the crags, gleaming like transparent quartz, as 
if you could see through and through the solid rock. Then came the supreme 
moment, when the sun rose above the highest, sharpest peak of the mountain top. 
Like a disc of polished steel it looked below the surface, with the rim of the disc 
burnished a thousand times brighter than the inner part. Hushed, with bated 
breath, the onlookers stood and drank in the ravishing beauty of the scene, not a 
word spoken, not a movement made until the guide called the party away, and then 
in silence each followed, a deep sigh heaved from each breast, and there were prob- 
ably few if any eyes that were not dim with tears. When anyone tried to speak, 
for the next ten minutes, the voice was broken almost to a sob. That scene will 
never become dim on the tablets of memory though one should live for fifty years. 
No other impression can ever be made to take the place of this enchanted scene of 
more than earthly beauty. While memory lasts, this wonderful valley will remain 
photographed on its pages — the stupendous masses of mountain, the dizzy height 
of crags, peaks and domes, all rising in majestic, titanic, indescribable grandeur, as 
if to hem in and protect the enchanted, matchless beauty of the little vale, so insig- 
nificant in size as compared with the mighty ramparts that hem it round, but so 
exquisitely beautiful in the tracery of green on tree and sward along the shining 
river that comes down as if from the clouds. These waters leap the cliffs with a 
joyous, triumphant roar of victory, then rush down the rocks, gather a moment in 
quiet lakes, shining like diamonds, or green as emeralds, then, with another plunge 
or a second rush, hasten down plainward to refresh the dry and dusty fields, then 
seaward to their native home. 

These grand, these beautiful, these awe-inspiring, these peaceful, these terrible, 
these quiet scenes are now all things of the past, excepting as "Fond memory brings 
the scenes of other days around me. " But these are now parts of my most inward 
being, and will be, for all the years I have to come, a most precious inheritance, 
more lasting than riches, more indestructible than gold, more dear than earthly 
wealth, like friends whose converse has been uplifting, whose companionship has 
been delightful, whose influence has all been for lasting good. Forever I can turn 
at will the pages of memory, the living album where these scenes are impressed, 
and again and again I can live over in spirit those few days upon the pine-clad 



12 BURTON'S BOOK. 

mountain tops, where so much strength is symbohzed in those towering crags and 
domes, where so much power is seen in rushing stream and plunging fall, and so 
much loveliness of vernal tracery, of slanting sun-rays and darkling shadow, of 
woods and mountain crests, mirrored in a moveless wave, of musical streams and 
glorious woods, and of brilliant flowers that strew the hillside, forming scenes such 
as demi-gods of the older world might have wrought in might as homes for fairy 
forms whose gentleness had enthralled their warlike spirits and inspired the first 
thrills of love and peace in their turbulent breasts. 



Yellowstone Park 



WHY do Americans go to Europe? Certainly not to see natural scenery. 
After a visit to the Grand Caiion of Arizona, counter-sunk 7000 feet 
into the heart of a mountain, 2 1 2 miles long, painted like sunsets and 
rainbows, carved as if by the hands of gnomes, built up as if for fortresses for the 
Titans; then Yosemite, a gem of emerald beauty, walled around by dizzy preci- 
pices, crags, domes and cliffs, and last, Yellowstone Park, with all its weird, un- 
canny pits of seething sulphur, its roaring, hissing steam vents, its spouting geysers, 
its stupendous waterfalls and pictured caiion walls; and around and among all 
these, vast mountains whose trees are the most glorious on the globe, with hun- 
dreds of miles of snowy peaks, 8000 to 15,000 feet in height, and with countless 
streams from the brawling mountain torrent, clear as crystal, to the majestic sweep 
of the broad river, capable of floating the largest ships that sail the seas, these 
panoramas of beauty, glory and grandeur leave little on the globe to create new 
impressions in the mind. From Los Angeles to St. Louis by way of Oregon 
and Washington, our route traversed nearly 5000 miles. Of the journey 3000 
miles were along magnificent mountain streams, whose waters are musical as song, 
and amid trees of giant growth. The route lay along several of the largest streams 
on the globe, or along their mountain affluents, whose waters are musical as the 
song of the morning stars, as joyous as the shouts of the Sons of God on the first 
morning of creation, and clear as the crystal floors of the City of God. Eden! 
If the mythical parents of mankind were assigned bowers of greater beauty than 
we passed through, it is hard to conceive that they could have been tempted to leave 
them. The fatal apple was a poor price to have taken for so exquisite an abode. 
I can conceive nothing more beautiful than the wild flowers and undergrowth, 
in these woods, upon the mountain brow and by the streams. The wild azalea, 
perhaps, might be said to lead in loveliness where all is so rich in bloom. Snowy 
white to a delicate pink and in great masses, it is impressive beyond power of words. 
The wild syringa is fragrant as a tuberose, whereas the azalea, a rival in color, has 
no perfume. There are wild lilacs, spireas and wild roses, hardly less attractive 
than the others. White or pale pink prevails in all these, excepting the wild rose, 
which varies from pure white, through pale pink, to rose pink. The daisies, yellow 
as gold and large as a half dollar, the baby eyes blue as the sky, and the Indian 
paint brush a brilliant Indian red, with other flowers of all hues in between, lark- 




Putman & Valentine Photo. 



YELLOWSTONE FALLS. 



14 BURTON'S BOOK. 

spurs, pinkish blue to purple as a king, and lupines blue as sapphire, all combine to 
make a scene of loveliness under the grand forest trees, below the snow-capped 
peaks and along the broad sweep of majestic rivers, or by the banks of streams 
singing down the slopes, and fill the soul with inexpressible delight. 

Art has ably aided nature in making these lands of the setting sun a most 
charming abode for man. We left our home in Los Angeles among the orange 
groves, under sheltering mountain heights, by the sunlit sea — Los Angeles, whose 
charms are known throughout the world — and spent several days in San Francisco, 
the great metropolis of the State, with its bay unrivalled in the world, with its 
Golden Gate Park and all its splendors. 

Portland was our next place of rest. I had not seen this city for twenty-five 
years. It was then a busy town of about 1 0,000 inhabitants. It is now a great 
city, solidly built, stretching along both sides of the Willamette for miles, the center 
of a great trade. It has great natural advantages, situate at the lower end of the 
Willamette Valley, where the river of that name debouches into the Columbia, and 
125 miles from the sea. The valley stretching south is one whose fertility and 
varied products can be excelled nowhere. The natural scenery is highly inspiring. 

Seattle is a magnificent city of massive business blocks, splendid hotels and 
varied industries. Some years ago Mr. Marburg, of tobacco fame, said in San 
Francisco: "My yacht has thrust her nose into about every bay on the Mediter- 
ranean and in many other parts of the world. I have just come from Puget Sound, 
and say freely it is the most beautiful sheet of salt water on the face of the earth." 
To one who goes up on the heights round Seattle and looks over this wonderfully 
pretty sheet of water, on the snowy caps of the Olympic range beyond, on Mt. 
Tacoma to the south and St. Helen's and Adams eastward, with other snow-capped 
peaks all around and between, and down on Lake Washington, between which and 
the Sound, Seattle is built, it is no difficult thing to indorse the opinion of Mr. 
Marburg. 

A week later we were at St. Paul, at the head of the navigable waters on 
the Mississippi, and then at St. Louis. Portland, Seattle, St. Paul and St. Louis 
are object lessons to all other cities in the matter of planting trees. The trees used 
are just common forest trees, maples, oaks, ash, and the plebeian cottonwood and 
lindens. In many places they are in double rows, one along the curb, the other 
aligning the lot on the inside of the sidewalk. Their branches interlock overhead 
and make a verdant arch of exquisite loveliness and of most grateful shade from 
the rays of the summer sun. No vandal hand of trolleyman or lineman dare touch 
one single bough of these trees. I asked a St. Louis man how they kept the ruth- 
less electric man from spoiling them. He said: "We do not have to stop them. 
They know better than to begin to mar them with axe or saw. I hardly know 
what the owner would resort to, first, if anyone made the attempt. But you know 
we are rather handy with a gun in Missouri. I think a shotgun would be the 
court of first resort." 

But I am writing about the Yellowstone Park, and here half my space is 
gone. Half way between Portland and St. Paul, on the Northern Pacific Rail- 
road, we come to the gate of the park. This is the beautiful gate over which is 
sculptured a quotation from the act of Congress dedicating the park: "For the 
benefit and enjoyment of the people." Some think only millionaires come here. 
We saw not one. There were many employers of labor, busy men of affairs, 
whose energy and brains make it possible for the mass of the people to earn a living. 
We saw hard-working professional men and women, school teachers, who were 



YELLOWSTONE PARK. 



15 




Putman & Valentine Photo. 
GRAND CANYON YELLOWSTONE RIVER. 



anything but rich, and we saw scores of wagons, each full of a family of people 
of small means, making the tour of the park. There did not appear to be one 
very rich man or woman in the Yellowstone. The Federal government has spent 
$600,000 in constructing nearly 200 miles of the finest roads in the park, and the 
people's money has seldom been better spent. Half a dozen fine hotels afford con- 
venient stopping places. The service is excellent, and the charges, which are offi- 
cially fixed, are very moderate. No one is permitted to carry firearms through the 
park or to kill game of any kind. Anyone who wishes may fish, and here is the 
best place on earth for the disciples of gentle Izaak Walton, whose soul found 
refuge by wood and stream from the turmoil of the Cromwellian wars. The conse- 
quence of this protection of the wild animals has been to make them so tame that 
they remind one of Alexander Selkirk's experience on the Island of Juan Fernandez, 
as told by the poet Cowper, and near the hotels a dozen bears may be seen feeding, 
at one time. A few rods away a dozen deer may be grazing, and the guests ap- 
proach to within a few hundred feet of the bears as well as of the deer, and neither 



16 BURTON'S BOOK. 

species of wild animal pays the slightest attention to the visitors. At other points 
great herds of elk and a few small herds of buffalo are encountered. 

The Yellowstone National Park is situated, as all know, on the very back- 
bone of the continental divide, being mostly in Wyoming, but with small areas 
overlapping, one into Idaho, the other into Montana. Here three great rivers have 
their source — the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the South or Snake branch of the 
Columbia. At one point is a small pond with two outlets, one going eastward into 
the Yellowstone and the Atlantic, the other west into the Columbia and Pacific. 
Here is one of the greatest bodies of water in the world at such an altitude, the 
Yellowstone Lake, fifteen by twenty miles, 8000 feet above sea-level. In the 
park there is no point of less than 6000 feet altitude, and peaks rise from ten to 
fourteen thousand feet. At many points the Grand Tetons, the highest peaks in 
the Rocky Mountains, nearly 15,000 feet, are visible. Of course at these altitudes 
snow-capped peaks and even long ranges are at all times in sight in all directions. 
The contour of the ground is very broken. The woods are mostly of scrub pine, 
and not impressive excepting from their thick mass, which clothes the landscape in 
most delightful green. Between the woods are valleys covered with a luxuriant 
growth of grass, studded with beautiful flowers. Here and there on all sides are 
the most peaceful of sylvan glades of great beauty. 

The trip through the park is taken in easy stages, some days of about ten miles 
and some up to forty miles. The road is so laid out as to bring the tourist from 
the Hot Springs near the entrance, through one enchanting region after another, to 
each noon or night stopping place, which in each instance is a climax, one rising 
above the other until the last day reaches the great scene of all, the Grand Canon 
of the Yellowstone. 

The park is the greatest in the world, bemg nearly seventy-five miles square 
and containing far above 3000 square miles. The government roads cover about 
1 50 miles, making an irregular circle around this area, and passing nearly all the 
time alongside one of the rivers, or a confluent of one of them, or past a lake of 
fresh water of an area of over 1 40 square miles, net, and this broken by bold head- 
lands indented with deep bays and studded with islands. Here is Nature's Won- 
derland, God's own curiosity shop. Here are all the gem-like beauty of Yosemite, 
all the matchless beauty of coloring of the Grand Caiion of Arizona, all the musical 
streams of the continent, cataracts that all but rival Niagara, snow peaks that rival 
Switzerland and, added to this, all of the weird, uncanny, grotesque and bewilder- 
ing, astounding curiosities ever imagined by the mind of man. Basin after basin 
is passed, each covering acres and square miles, where hundreds of boiling springs, 
scores of seething mud springs, hundreds of geysers spouting boiling water meet the 
eye in all directions. There are geysers which spout every two minutes, others 
every five minutes, some once an hour, some three or four times a day, others once 
a day, once a week, once a month, once in several months. Some throw a slender 
column of crystal liquid diamonds in the sunlight a few feet high; while others 
eject to heights varying from thirty to several hundred feet a lake of hot water, 
which falls in showers of myriads of diamonds all around the cavern, from which 
they have just emerged. It is impossible to speak of these things in detail. The 
whole mountain top, for hundreds of miles, is honeycombed with these wonders. 
They vary from an orifice the size of a cup to craters many feet in diameter, from 
a mere crack in the crust of the earth to a yawning fissure going down 1 800 feet 
of which we know, and no one knows or ever will know how much deeper. One 
of these natural wonders charms the soul by its marvelous beauty. The next to it 



YELLOWSTONE PARK. 



17 



provokes Homeric laughter by its grotesque, gnomelike, clownish antics. The next 
terrifies by its exhibition of Titanic power. At one moment you gaze into the un- 
known depth of a crater shaped like a morning glory and surpassing in the clarity 
of its blue the tints of any flower you ever saw. Only turn around and you stand 
face to face with a blow hole which emits a column of steam, hot as Tophet, and 
with the force of a steam engine of 1 0,000 horse power blowing off steam. One 
minute you stand by a sapphire pond which is the very counterpart of a piece cut 
from a summer sky, whose beauty makes you dumb in admiration, and the next 
moment you hold your sides laughing as you watch the paint pots splutter and splash 
and flop about like thick batter or mush boiling in a cauldron over a fire heated 




Putman & Valentine Photo. 



GEYSER, YELLOWSTONE PARK. 



18 BURTON'S BOOK. 

like the fiery furnace of Daniel the prophet. At one point you wonder at vast 
terraces built up in columns, fluted like the face of an organ, or as if for a pulpit 
where some gnome is to hold forth, painted beyond the reach of human art, sur- 
passing hues of flowers, of butterflies' wings, of splendid sunsets, or of beauteous 
rainbows. At another you gaze down into a great pit of leaden-gray marl, wrought 
to a mortar and throbbing like a pump, which throws up barrels of the compound 
at each "plunk," "plunk" of the steam to a height of thirty feet at times. As you 
look into an emerald lake, or a sapphire pond, you would scarcely be surprised if 
a fairy clad in gauze and gems, crowned with stars and floating on dazzling wings, 
were to emerge, and it would not surprise you to see a clownish gnome or kobold 
spring on his vaulting pole from the mouth of the paint pot or mud geyser. Two 
lakes lie side by side under pine-clad slopes, there is only a narrow beaver dam to 
separate their waters, one as green as emerald, the other blue as turquoise. Why? 
Ask the Divine Mysteries that made them. About the craters of the geysers the 
cone IS often built up in basms, some as large as a saucer, others many feet across, 
shaped like shells and colored so that no shells ever surpassed them. Yellows, 
pinks, greens and blues of all hues, browns, grays and reds of all shades are here 
side by side. The guide, who does not know, tells you this is owing to arsenic or 
sulphur or other mineral. The scientific student who does know tells you it is a 
vegetable growth, algae, which flourishes in boiling water, of microscopic smallness, 
and hard as flint, which gives these colors to these shell-like basins. What a mys- 
tery that the algae, sea weed, should flourish here in these seething cauldrons of 
boiling water. 

Thus the days are spent, until at last you reach the Grand Cafion, fifteen 
miles long, 1200 to 1500 feet deep< almost sheer. At the bottom runs a mighty 
stream, the Yellowstone River, which drains this great plateau. Two great falls 
break this flow, one I 09, the other 208 feet high, and the volume of water which 
plunges here through a gap only 75 feet wide is said to be in volume half that 
going over the American Falls at Niagara. The whole fifteen miles of river is a 
torrent whose roar terrifies you at the rim. The line of the falls cuts the caiion 
in two, and the cliffs that rise above the plunge of both falls lend an air of inde- 
scribable grandeur to the scene. 

But possibly the greatest charm of it all is the coloring of the terraces, basins 
and, above all, of the gorge. There are examples of upheavals here and of con- 
vulsions from deep down in the earth, which easily remind one of the fabled 
demiurges of ancient cosmogonies. There are heights which make the steadiest 
head reel. There is gem-like beauty on all sides. There are the awful plunge of 
the cataracts, the sweep of the mighty stream, the grand rush of the boiling torrent, 
and the terrible roar of the seething rapids. But after all is seen, it is on the won- 
ders of the colored shells around the geysers, in the deep pools, that sleep as quiet 
and blue as the sky, or that well up in balls of pale blue fire from depths unknown, 
and especially on the brilliant tracery of the canon, that the mind loves to dwell. 
It is to this the very soul clings, reluctant to be torn away from something of mar- 
velous beauty that has been wrought into one's very being and made henceforth part 
of one's very self. No pen can describe this wild, prodigal, lavish wealth of color 
in basin or lake, on fluted terrace or on giddy peak. No pencil could reproduce it 
in a thousand years of effort. The very sun in heaven whose rays once wrought 
it all can again catch it on no film or plate. Here angel hands wrought with sun- 
sets as a palette, with rainbows to copy, with hues from heaven's walls and floors 
and domes. Here the most gorgeous of sunsets have been petrified for countless 



YELLOWSTONE PARK. 




Putman & Valentine Photo. 
MORNING GLORY POOL, YELLOWSTONE PARK. 



thousands of years. Here rainbows have been photographed on the rocks for 
epochs. Here all the hues of all the flowers that deck the earth have been reflected 
for all coming ages. These colors vary from snowy white that lie like soaring 
angels' wings in adoration above these works of the Father's hands. They run into 
pale yellows, pale as cream, to yellows deep as burnished gold. The most delicate 
rose pinks are here that put to shame the blush on the cheek, and then deepen 
to tan, maroon, and browns as dark as all Japan's army in one mass. Flanked 
by cream yellows, chrome, rose pink, maroon and streaks of blue and green, rises a 
great crag of Indian red, as if the blood of the first murder had stained it for all 
eternity, and stooping figures, clad in ghostly white, bend over it as if to do expia- 
tion for Cain's crime. 



The winter at the East has been particularly severe. The spring is worse 
than a nightmare. It is horrible. The severe winter drove to California an 
unusually numerous army of tourists. The spring with its blizzards and snow is 
sending across the continent an unusually large number of settlers on the low 
fares now put in force by the railroads. 

We may forget how immeasurably precious a climate hke ours is, how 
inexpressibly beautiful is our landscape in these March days. Our ears may be 
deafened by custom to the music of the waves upon the shore, and our eyes 
dimmed to the glory of the poppy beds. But the eastern people have a livelier 
sense of these things and their attraction, which in the last thirty years have 
swelled the population of Southern California from 50,000 to much over 500,000, 
and will in the next thirty years increase its population from 500,000 to probably 
2,000,000. 



20 BURTON'S BOOK. 



Salt Lake City. 



SALT LAKE CITY, as it stands today, is a great municipality of about 80,- 
000 souls. Some claim as high as 90,000. There are some features about 
this city which are about as near unique as could be found in any city upon 
the globe. It is surrounded on all sides, except where the great Salt Lake lies, by a 
valley of wonderful fertility, sloping up into ranges of mountains which hem it in 
with peaks rising to 7000 or 8000 feet. Through the center of the valley flows 
the river Jordan, a sluggish, muddy stream of considerable volume, from which 
irrigation water is drawn throughout the whole length of the valley, rendering this 
one of the most productive spots upon the whole globe. This valley is about 
twenty-five miles long and perhaps nearly the same width. 

If we go back just fifty-nine years last July and look at this valley as it was 
when the first company of Latter Day Saints came through the pass and looked 
down upon it, the transformation of the present day will appear striking. As these 
Mormons wended their way westward, they were warned by trappers and explorers 
time and again that wherever they settled they should not try to found a colony 
in the valley of the great Salt Lake. It was the most barren, unpromising bit of 
territory in what was at that time called the Great American Desert. The little 
rivulets of water which came down from the gorges in the mountainsides were swal- 
lowed up in the thirsty sands as soon as they emerged from the canons. 

This colony which undertook to build the city of Salt Lake nearly sixty years 
ago numbered less than 150 persons. There were three women and a few children 
in the company. Salt Lake City at the present day is divided about half and half 
between Latter Day Saints and Gentiles, but this colony of Mormon pioneers had 
developed the Salt Lake Valley and built up a very considerable city before the 
Gentiles in any appreciable number began to settle in the city or in the valley. 
These pioneer Mormons laid out the city on a scale of wonderful magnificence, 
when one considers the conditions surrounding its foundation. The temple square 
was to be the center of the colony. It is to this day the starting point for all 
United States surveys in the State of Utah. The city blocks were all laid out in 
ten-acre squares. The streets were laid out 1 3 1 feet wide for all the principal 
thoroughfares. From the temple east and west there are about twenty-four of 
these ten-acre blocks. North and south there are about sixteen. There is no other 
city ever streeted with such simphcity as this. Around the temple square are East 
Temple street. West Temple street. North Temple street and South Temple street. 
The next street eastward is First East, and so on to East Twelfth. The first one 
west is First West, and so on to Twelve West, and the same north and south. 
Knowing the starting point, the visitor of a day has no trouble in finding any given 
locality. 

These founders of the city of Salt Lake were a peculiar people. Seventeen 
years prior to the founding of this city a simple New England lad, Joseph Smith, 
had come before the world with what he proclaimed to be a new revelation from 
heaven. From Vermont he and a few followers removed to Kirtland, O. Driven 
from there, they migrated to Missouri, where they met with the utmost hostility on 
the part of the surrounding population. They crossed over into Illinois and settled 
at Nauvoo. The prophet, as Joseph Smith had come to be called, was arrested 



SALT LAKE CITY. 



21 



and taken before the courts in Missouri, time and time again, but was always set 
free, as no crime could be proved against him. Finally, in the jail at Carthage, 
Mo., he was shot to death, together with his brother. The people in the surround- 
ing country then drove the Mormons from Nauvoo, and in the depth of winter the 
whole church moved across the river into Iowa, then a wilderness infested by savage 
Indians. It was from this point that Brigham Young set his face westward with 
his hundred and a half followers to found Salt Lake City. 

About ten years after their arrival they set to work to build a temple, which 
it required forty years to finish. It was consecrated about ten years ago, after the 
people of Salt Lake had been allowed to inspect its interior arrangements. This 
temple cost probably not less than three million dollars. It is built of hewn granite 
blocks smoothly cut, taken from a quarry some twenty miles away in the Wasatch 
Mountains and hauled for the most part on ox teams to the site of the temple. It 
took four yoke of oxen four days to haul single stones that have gone into this 
building. It is of a peculiar type of architecture, which has come to be recognized 
as Mormon. The extreme length of the building is 1 86J/2 feet, extreme width 
1 I8J/2 feet, height of the side walls 107J/2 feet, the east center tower 210 feet, 
the west center tower 204 feet. The foundations are sixteen feet wide and eight 
feet deep, the basement walls eight feet thick, and above that the walls are six feet 
thick. Inverted arches are constructed in the foundations in order to support these 
enormously massive walls. The entire area taken up by the building is 2 1 ,850 
feet. This temple stands in one corner of the temple square, and occupies two and 
one-half acres with the accessory buildings. On this whole area only the foot of 
faithful Mormons is ever permitted to make an imprint. Since the dedication of 
the temple, no Gentile has ever been allowed to enter either the building itself or 
the sacred grounds around it. 

Another portion of the ten acres is devoted to the tabernacle, the general 
meeting place of the Mormon church. Not so beautiful as the temple, the taber- 




WASATCH MOUNTAINS, FROM SALT LAKE CITY. 



11 BURTON'S BOOK. 

nacle has features of great interest. This tabernacle is 1 50 feet wide, 250 feet 
long, and 80 feet high. It will seat 8000 people. The surrounding walls are an 
oblong, constructed of red sandstone pillars, there being between each two a door 
of entrance and exit around the whole space of these walls. From the top of the 
walls springs an immense arch constructed entirely of wood in its framework, and 
being of truss construction, and as finished being like an eggshell, cut in two and 
resting on its edges along the sandstone pillars. 

There is not a nail in this great truss framework of the tabernacle. Nails 
were worth almost a dollar apiece in Salt Lake when this tabernacle was built, 
between 1857 and 1870. The beams are fastened together with immense wooden 
pegs. In some places great rawhide thongs were braced around the joints in order 
that as the green wood should shrink the rawhide thongs would shrink with it, and 
hold the whole framework together. It is certainly one of the most wonderful 
arches in the known world. The building seats comfortably 8000 persons, and 
can be made to hold as many as 1 0,000. So perfect is the provision for exit that 
the whole building can be emptied in the space of a few minutes. The voice of a 
speaker, even though it may be a very weak one, can be distinctly heard in all parts 
of this immense building. Ten thousand persons have no difficulty in hearing 
every word that is uttered. The wonder of the temple and the tabernacle is that 
they were constructed by plain men without knowledge of architecture or much skill 
in building. 

In the platform end of the building stands the great organ. It is quite as 
wonderful as either the temple or the tabernacle. It contains 5500 pipes, some of 
them a quarter of an inch long, and some thirty-three feet long. The smaller ones 
are as thin as the smallest flute, and the largest as thick as an average man's body. 
This organ was originally constructed by a cabinet-maker, who was a member of 
the early Mormon church, but it has been reconstructed several times since. There 
are very few such instruments to be found in the world. The audience is often 
deceived, wondering where the choir is, the sound of many voices coming from the 
inside of this wonderful instrument. 

On a ten-acre block, near the center of the city, stands the combined city and 
county Courthouse of the modern city of Salt Lake. It is a magnificent building, 
which cost over $1,000,000 to erect, and throughout all the halls the wainscoting 
is in beautiful Utah onyx. To the south of the city there is a magnificent park, 
known as Liberty Park, set apart in the early days for this particular purpose by 
Brigham Young, and now provided with ample roads, walks, and a beautiful, 
though small sheet of water. 

The wide streets are all well paved, and there is no city in America probably 
kept cleaner than the city of Salt Lake. The River Jordan furnishes abundant 
water for irrigation of the valley and ordinary domestic use in the city, and the 
principal streets have living streams of water running down each side of them for 
hours every day. Outside of the immediate business center the streets are aligned 
with abundant shade trees, mostly Lombardy poplars and maple. In the residence 
section of the city the houses are scarcely visible from the high grounds above the 
city, so abundant and rich is the foliage of these trees aligning the streets and of 
those in the gardens around the houses. 

That little band of a hundred and a half pioneers of sixty years ago may be 
likened to an acorn. The city of Salt Lake, with its wide and beautifully shaded 
streets, and its rills of water running down the curbs, with a beautiful $3,000,000 
temple, the wonderful tabernacle, the assembly hall on the same grounds, the city 



SALT LAKE CITY. 



23 



and county building, costing over $1,000,000, the great Liberty Park, and several 
smaller parks; the bustling city of 80,000 souls, with bank clearings of $6,000,000 
or $7,000,000 a week and the great valley twenty-five miles square, divided up into 
farms of a few acres for the most part; lands worth from $300 to $1000 an acre, 
and all in a high state of cultivation; the great chain of valleys all through the Wa- 
satch Mountains similar to this one, and all similarly cultivated ; a population in Utah 
of about 350,000 souls, 75 per cent, of them Mormons, and numerous colonies scat- 
tered all through the Rocky Mountains from the confines of Alaska down into 
Mexico, numbering with the missions in foreign lands not less than 400,000 mem- 
bers of the church of the Latter Day Saints and between 1 00,000 and 200,000 
other professing Mormons, but lax in their allegiance to their church, stand as the 
oak which has grown out of that acorn. 

It will probably be news of a somewhat startling nature for most people to 
be told that of all the Mormons who have ever professed this faith, only about 2 
per cent, have practiced polygamy. Of course 2 per cent., when you come to 
figure it out, makes pretty large figures. Of 40,000 Mormons in Salt Lake City 
today, if there are 1 0,000 male adults, the 2 per cent, would give only 200 prac- 
ticing polygamy. But if we take 75 per cent, of the 350,000 in all Utah, we 
get close to 3000 persons who have plural wives, and for the whole half-million 
devotees of the Mormon Church there would be nearly 1 0,000. 

The church of the Latter Day Saints is a business organization, as well as a 
religious one. The church as an incorporation cannot be said to occupy itself much 
with business, but the hierarchy controls a great deal of the business of the city. 
Zion Savings Bank and Trust Company was organized in 1873. It has at the 
present time deposits amounting to nearly $4,500,000. The stock is owned mostly 
by the president of the church and other members of the hierarchy. Its deposits 
are about half and half divided between the Saints and the Gentiles. The State 




TABERNACLE, SALT LAKE CITY. 



24 



BURTON'S BOOK. 




MORMON TEMPLE, SALT LAKE CITY. 



Bank of Utah is another institution controlled much in the same way. Its deposits 
amount to nearly $2,000,000. The hierarchy also controls an immense mercantile 
establishment, known as the Zion Cooperative Mercantile Institution, which does a 
business of about $5,000,000 a year. The same persons for the most part control 
the street railroads of the city of Salt Lake, and formerly controlled the great 
bathing establishment at Saltair, but this has recently been sold to the Salt Lake 
Railroad. A great deal of property in Salt Lake is difficult to get title to, because 
of certain entailments made in favor of the church. 

1 he State of Utah is destined to exercise a considerable influence upon the 
industrial development of the great Southwest. The assessed valuation of Salt 
Lake City is $45,000,000. The city's bank clearing record runs over $210,000,- 
000 a year. Its twelve banks have deposits of more than $30,000,000. The 
school population of the city is 1 9,000 children, between 6 and 1 8 years old. 
The school property is worth $2,000,000. The farm area of Utah represents 
over 20,000 farms, with a total acreage of 1,653,955. The ranges of the State 
support two and a half million sheep, more than a quarter of a million head of 
cattle, and nearly one hundred thousand head of horses and mules. The sugar 
factories produce over 50,000,000 pounds of sugar a year. 

One of the most interesting experiments in farming at this present time is now 
going on on the dry lands of the State of Utah. Much of the land heretofore 
considered useless is being summer fallowed one year and sowed the next with a 
peculiar species of wheat which is producing from twenty to forty bushels of the 
finest grain. The farmers engaged in these experiments claim that there are hun- 
dreds of thousands of acres of land in the State heretofore regarded as next to 
useless, which can be made to produce an average of about twenty bushels of wheat 
a year. It is wheat of a peculiarly fine quality. The rainfall is about ten to 
fourteen inches a year, most of it falling in the months from February to May. 
With proper tilth that much rainfall will produce good crops of grain. 




IN WEST LAKE PARK, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA. 



26 BURTON'S BOOK. 



Land of Beauty 



NOT France nor Italy ever presented a scene so entranclngly beautiful as the 
great valley of Southern California. Indeed, it may be doubted if any 
spot in the northern hemisphere at any season of the year ever thow^ed so 
supernally lovely as this valley around Los Angeles on a day in mid-January. 

It would be difficult to decide which feature of this matchless landscape was 
most fascinating to the sensitive spirit capable of feeling the spell in all its intensity. 
The great amphitheater usually referred to as the Los Angeles Valley stretches 
more than 1 00 miles eastward from the ocean. The towering ramparts of the 
everlasting hills stand guard over this most variously beautiful and fertile spot on 
all the myriad-tinted footstool of the Most High. Along the ocean shore the 
valley opens out to an equal extent of 1 00 miles. Three streams, all mountain 
torrents, under the copious rains of the season, cut it from mountain base to where 
the waves lave the strand. From where the steep sides of the mountain range, 
deeply furrowed with canons and corrugated with ridges, end the plain slopes in a 
gentle decline or drops in terraced plateaux to the streams. Close up to the moun- 
tain base the contour is broken and bold. At lower levels the declivity is gentle, 
and often so regular as to present no slightest obstacle to obstruct the view for 
many miles. 

There is the physical topography of the valley. Monday the angels, who 
stud the sky with stars, who paint the clouds like light, or set them agleam with a 
world of fire, seem to have poured out all the riches of their hues most brilliant, 
most glorious, most sombre, as well as all their neutral tints, with hands as lavish 
as the utmost power of their Almighty Lord. 

During the early morning hours the skies were curtained with masses of clouds 
as dense as in a pouring rainstorm, others as filmy as the most delicate tracery of 
lace. High above the horizon, where the sunlight lay behind the cloud, these 
masses were as dark as gloom. Lower on the horizon, where the beams of light 
fell directly on the masses before the eye, there rose billowy mountain peaks, tow- 
ering height above height and almost solid in their effect upon the eye. Burnished 
silver never left the hands of mortal smith so glowing white. All the wool ever 
clipped from all the flocks of earth since Abel was a herdsman, washed cleaner than 
human fuller ever made a fleece, never were spotless and soft as some of those masses 
of cloud that hung as curtains across the sky. At other points some glorious angel 
of the dawn dashed reds and purples, brilliant as fire or royal as a king, on some 
uplifting mass of cloud that seemed ambitious to be compared to the sun in heaven. 

And all along the ridges of the great mountain range for hundreds of miles 
lay billowy masses of snow, 500 to 2000 feet high, rising boldly into the sky, until 
the tops became mingled with the clouds. They seemed ambitiously contending 
for the prize for spotless purity with the overhanging clouds, white and pure as light 
itself. Here and there the masses of cloud lifted for a moment to let the blue sky 
break through and show where the snow ended and cloud began. It seemed a 
challenge of the skies to the earth, which would say: "See, there are the earth- 
bound snows, here are the soaring clouds, children of the upper air. Are we not 
more spotless than they?" But the mountain peak bowed not nor shrunk from the 




A. B. Benton. Architect 



GLENWOOD HOTEL, RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA. 



28 BURTON'S BOOK. 

comparison, but as the sun struck the snows more directly they seemed to gleam 
back defiance, and proclaim: "No, earth nor heaven knows no whiteness so un- 
sullied as ours." 

And the plain? Snow and cloud, billow upon billow on the highest points 
of earth and in the heavens above seemed to shrink from contrast with the multi- 
colored glories of the lower world. The hills cast their shadows darkly, and the 
procession of the clouds moved in masses between the sunlight and the plain, as if 
to intercept the light and cast a murky shadow over the plain lest its charms should 
win the highest meed of praise. 

But it was all in vain. This is all the land of sunshine, and these beauties 
and glories are all the offspring of his rays. With impartial favor he shed his 
brightest beams on the billowy masses of the clouds, on the seemingly equally imma- 
terial and unsubstantial snows, folded in league-long convolutions around the rugged 
mountain tops, reducing them to a soft contour equal to that of the plain below or 
the cloud above. And now these beams fell on the terraced or undulating plain, 
brmgmg out myriad hues, each vymg with the others. The rosy fingers of newly- 
born Aurora, the splendors of the setting sun, when the steeds of Phoebus, climbing 
or descending the declivity of the heavens, beats the air into flecks of flame, were 
not brighter than the hues wrought by the beams of the sun all over this broad ex- 
panse of the valley. In the foreground of the almost infinite picture were massed 
hundreds of thousands of orange trees. The abundant rains had washed the 
trees of every spot of dust. It had sent fresh life blood coursing through their veins. 
The leaves gleamed and glistened in the sun, and the abundant fruit, yellow as 
minted gold, hung in closely massed spheres from every limb. The tender growth 
of grass or peas or weeds between the rows concealed the brown earth and there 
was little to break the continuous mass of vivid emerald which seemed in vain intent 
on covering up the brilliant gold of the fruit, as if there were rivalry there, too. 
And elsewhere all over the sloping mesa and level plain and along the water-courses 
and up the sides of the smooth hills the most delicate green carpeted all the scene. 

Shut your eyes and imagine all the fairest scenes your eyes have ever rested on 
in the most luxuriant springtimes that have ever decked the earth and then it will 
fall short of this midwinter day in this favored land. 

And all the valley from mountain base to ocean strand is studded thick with 
pretty homes between the crowding orchard rows. Many, very many, of these 
homes are magnificent. Hundreds of villages nestle along the plain and by the 
water-courses, and a score of towns or cities occupy the more populous centers at 
all points of the valley. 

No two days are alike along these glorious mountain heights, these rich plains, 
in the changing skies. No two hours are alike, and hardly two seconds. It is a 
series of dissolving views, and each seems lovelier or grander, more entrancing than 
the previous one. From now until the end of June, as the winter passes and spring, 
then summer, comes, each week will present a scene of greater and more luxuriant 
growth until the pale green spears of grain now springing from the earth become 
golden harvests, ready for the sickle. The orange groves will gradually lose their 
crop of gold, but showers of fragrant blossoms, Hke new snow, will take its place. 
The vineyards are now brown as the men trim the vines and burn them in great 
steel caldrons between the rows, the smoke going up as straight as a steeple in the 
motionless air. By April these great stretches of vines will begin to bud and bur- 
geon, and by May they will be a sea of vivid green. The pepper trees, then as 
now, will droop with their lace-like foliage around the homes of the fruit growers; 



ON CALIFORNIA. 



29 



and the stately eucalyptus will stand, slim and straight, graceful and willowy as 
youth. Myriads of roses will strew the fences and many rare flowers will fill the 
scene at every point. In this land of the sun, beauty is not a rare thing, met here 
and there and continuing for a day. Here is beauty's home, and in all her moods 
and guises she is always the most common thmg by all the wayside, and at every 
turn. 

How common is this beauty! Around Redlands there are 7500 acres of 
orange grove. One firm at Riverside has 2000 acres of oranges and lemons. One 
company owns and cultivates in a body, 3000 acres of vines along the plain. 
The amphitheater of mountains stands like a rampart around the valley stretching 
for at least 300 miles, and during the weeks of spring and early summer the snow- 
capped ridge will extend at least 1 00 miles, the snow from a few hundred up to 
2000 feet into the clouds. Above this will bend skies as deep as aqua marine, or 
of so pale and indefinite a blue that you scarcely can name the tint. There will be 
purples and all the shades of the opal or the rainbow hanging above these mountain 
tops or above the ocean far out on the horizon. There is mountain height, varied 
plain, long stretches of ocean strand, the almost limitless ocean itself — and above 
all these the ever-changing skies. 




WINTER GOLF, RAYMOND HOTEL, PASADENA, CALIFORNIA. 



30 BURTON'S BOOK. 



Pomona and Roundabout 



4 4 CT^ E'E Naples and go no further." "See Avignon and rest at the gates of 
kj Paradise." "See Rome and die." 

We are ordinarily only subconscious of the fact that real estate booms 
are not of today nor yesterday. The good people, full of civic pride, who invented 
the three phrases quoted above, seem to have had some crude notion of how to at- 
tract population to the cities of their love. 

If Naples, Avignon or Rome had been situated where Pomona is in the center 
of Southern California, their cry to the world to come and make a home with them 
would have been inadequate. 

This hunt for a paradise upon earth has never been absent from the mind of 
man since the parents of the race were driven out of the primeval Paradise. And 
Paradise is, after all, more a matter of climate than of any other circumstance con- 
nected with human life. Deserts are void of verdure not because of the poverty 
of the sail in numerous cases, but because of the and condition of the climate, lack- 
ing rain. 

An English poet talks of the "leafy month of June" and an American poet 
whose days had been spent mostly on bleak New England shores sings of the per- 
fection of "a day in June," telling his readers that "then if ever come perfect days." 
The hymn writer sings "bright fields beyond the swelling flood stand decked in living 
green." He tells us "if we could stand where Moses stood and view the landscape 
o'er," that "not bars and bolts, not raging floods nor hostile spears would fright us 
from the shore." 

These poets, sacred and profane, never stood on the top of the new park on 
the northern outskirts of the city of Pomona and "viewed the landscape o'er" to the 
mountain tops, to the far east and south, and in the near foreground the beautiful 
city called after the goddess of fruits, lying nestling amid orchards such as neither 
"the Canaan we love," Southern Italy nor Southern France, nor any other spot 
beneath the sun, surpasses, and which few can match. There in the center of 
Southern California the heart seeking for entrancement in beautiful scenes and per- 
fect days need not wait until June nor even until April. The morning sun rises in 
as glorious splendor in January as in June in that favored spot, where summer is 
perpetual and winter unknown. Here is indeed "the land of pure delight," where 
perfect days are found every month, indeed every week, throughout the revolving 
year. 

These are generalities intended to be glittering. Come down to specific state- 
ments. 

Wednesday last was the 20th day of the month of May. The writer stood 
upon the topmost point in Ganesha Park, the new breathing spot for the rapidly 
growing city of Pomona, and looked over the valley under the streaming rays of a 
noonday sun, with breezes fragrant as those of Araby the blest coming up softly 
from the southward, laden with the perfume of hundreds of millions of blooms from 
shrubs and trees of a thousand varieties. Let no reader inragine that there is any 
exaggeration in these words. A poet's pen could not too warmly describe the scene 
that lay beneath the feet of the beholders. No painter's brush could ever catch 



32 BURTON'S BOOK. 

colors glorious enough and mingle them artistically enough to match the absolutely 
matchless scene. 

These old San Jose hills, fifty or sixty acres of which have been converted 
into a beauty spot for the enjoyment of the citizens of Pomona, rise several hundred 
feet above the surrounding plain, and afford a view in almost a perfect circle, with 
a radius of anywhere from ten to fifty miles, limited only by the strength of vision 
and the clearness of the atmosphere. This noontime on Wednesday last the 
weather was in a condition of absolute perfection. The breeze was of the gentlest, 
and there was simply a little blue haze in the atmosphere similar to that of an 
Indian summer noon in the Middle Western States, limiting the vision to perhaps 
a circle whose radius might be seven or eight miles, and leaving abundant room for 
play of the imagination as to what lay farther afield. 

If words would only come to mind to picture with anything like adequacy the 
scene that lay in the valley below ! On all sides up to the mountain base is almost 
an uninterrupted expanse of as rich orchard as the sun in his course around the 
world looks down upon. Indeed, it is utterly impossible that another circle of 
seven miles' radius could be found outside of Southern California to compare at 
all with this entrancing scene. There are only three or four other similar places 
in all this wonderfully favored land that are worthy to be compared with the valley 
that lies around Pomona. It is not the vivid but somewhat pale green that makes 
Ireland so famous. It is not the hyperborean verdure with a little touch of cold- 
ness in the tone even in mid-summer. It is that rich, dark green of the waxy foliage 
of the orange grove and of olive trees, with an intensity of warmth in it that seems 
to reflect to the vision something of the ardor of the summer sunbeams as they affect 
the sense of feeling. 

Ringing around this valley, as if a rampart built by Titans, rise the Sierra 
Madre Mountains to the northward, with San Antonio, snow-capped even in the 
glowing summer sun, standing as a sentinel peak over lower mountain ridges and 
over the valley reaching far off half a hundred miles in many directions. This is 
indeed a bulwark to the valley. The north winds are held in check, and the up- 
lifted mountain side reflects over this wondrously fertile land the rays of the sun, 
making the life-giving warmth double in the portion shed over the orchards and 
gardens of this, one of the fairest spots on all the earth. 

The birdseye view from the topmost point in the park showed subdivisions 
newly opened up in all directions from the heart of the city and being rapidly occu- 
pied with comfortable, artistic homes, some of quite moderate cost and others show- 
ing an expenditure of a very considerable sum of money. There are few million- 
aires about Pomona, but the community is made up almost entirely of very well-to-do 
people. 

There is no doubt that Pomona is growing rapidly. The school census, just 
completed, indicates a population of about I 1 ,000 souls, marking exceedingly rapid 
growth. The view over the townsite confirms this in every respect. New houses 
are springing up in all directions from the center of the city, not in singles, but in 
half dozens. A new brick high school is being built at very great cost, which 
would do honor to a city of a quarter of a million. The Presbyterian congregation 
is just completing a church building, handsome and at very great cost. The Meth- 
odist people have recently completed a similar house of worship. 

One of the leading banks of the city, in the call just made by the Comptroller 
of the Currency, shows individual deposits subject to check amounting to very close 
to $800,000. The president of this bank came there nine years ago when the 



ON CALIFORNIA. 33 

deposits account amounted to much less than 50 per cent, of that represented by 
the figures just given. Indeed, the figures nme years ago were in round numbers 
$320,000. 

The large orange crop handled from Pomona out of the surrounding orchards 
and owned mostly by people m and about Pomona does not account largely for 
this increase in deposits, for the reason that although the crop of navel oranges is 
about disposed of, the returns are not half in yet. The explanation given is that 
new people coming into the country and investing in property, going into business, 
and otherwise adding to the custom of the bank, are responsible for this great 
increase in individual deposits. 

Naturally this property is held for high prices. These orange groves sell 
readily at $1500 an acre, and some of them are held for $1800 and even $2000 
per acre, where the buildings count for a very small proportion of the cost of the 
groves themselves. For three years past the net receipts from these orange groves 
fully justify the prices at which they are held. 

The writer is not exaggerating, warm as the tone of this description may seem. 
It is not the writing of an enthusiast, or of one whose views are circumscribed. He 
has stood upon San Marino and looked down over the Bay of Naples and out to 
the Island of Capri ; upon the Pincian Hill at Rome, where from the Belvedere the 
Campagna, the Alban Hills, the Apennines away to snow-capped Soracte may be 
seen. The fertile plains of Northern Italy, as well as the beautiful Val d'Arno 
above Florence, the Swiss Lakes, the Rhine land, the rural scenes of England, 
including Stratford-on-Avon and all of Warwickshire, and all the famous beauty 
spots of Ireland, from Ireland's Eye to the lakes of Killarney, are familiar objects 
to his mind's eye. And thinking with careful consideration and weighing well 
every word written, it is his deliberate opinion that there is not in all that vast 
stretch of the world, so far as he has seen it, a spot to be compared with the valley 
around Pomona, as viewed from the top of the city's new park. 

Nestling just beneath the mountain brow to the northwest is the flourishing 
town of Lordsburg. Northeast lies Claremont, and farther off easterly, Ontario. 
Southward is the great Chino ranch, the town of Chino and its big sugar factory, 
and, looking away directly eastward, the vision is lost off toward Colton and San 
Bernardino, with the Santa Ana River running through that wondrously rich valley. 
In the circuit of seven or eight miles' radius taken in from the top of the park, there 
is scarcely a broken spot to interrupt the waxy, dark-green, warm foliage of these 
wonderfully productive orange groves. 

As the scene is matchless from the point of view of the artist, looking from 
snow-capped mountain peak to flourishing orange groves and near-by homes with 
millions of rose blooms, from the brilliant red of the Marie Henrietta through the 
delicate pink of the Duchess to the spotless, pure white of the Lamarque or the 
Bride rose, so it is matchless in the revenues derived by the owners from these groves 
and orchards, which cover the whole intervening space from the observer's feet to 
where vision is lost in the far-off distance. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 35 



Will Crown Again Her Splendid Hills 



WHEN the Easter Sunday sun climbed a week ago the grand heights of 
the great Sierra Mountains and looked down over the rippling waves of 
the Pacific, a magnificent city slumbered in the dawn upon half a hun- 
dred sublime hills upon the great bay by the Golden Gate. Today that once 
glorious city lies a burned, tortured and blackened wreck along the wharves upon 
her magnificent water front, back along the broad plain where the commerce of 
the world had been carried on and handled, and up along the vine-clad, flowered 
slopes among her palace-crowned hills where stood the homes of those whose fore- 
sight, skill, energy and courage had reared that world's emporium for commerce 
and for trade. 

The story of the terrible upheaval of nature and of the cruel, relentless flames 
which wrought this ruin and made a charred, blackened heap of all the glories of 
one of the most beautiful cities on the earth has been told over and over again 
during the four days that have elapsed. It is needless to recount the tragedy. 

Let us turn from yesterday to today and set our faces toward tomorrow. To 
use a most expressive and energetic phrase, San Francisco "will not lie down." 
The people of San Francisco have in their veins the blood of the Argonauts. They 
have in their hearts the courage and determination begotten of the very atmosphere 
of western life. There are no "quitters" among the people of the city, even in 
this its hour of dire disaster. Seated upon a bay capable of giving refuge to the 
combined merchant fleets of all the nations of the earth and anchoring by their side 
all the squadrons of all the warlike nations on the globe, San Francisco shall not 
be permitted to lie in ruins. Looking out the Golden Gate from that safe harbor 
where all these fleets might ride in safety at their anchorage, the great city on the 
hills faces the Orient with all its teeming millions of people, with all its rich possi- 
bilities of commerce and of trade. Behind the city by the Golden Gate upon the 
glorious bay lies all America, a hundred millions of busy, prosperous, progressive, 
resolute men and women. The Golden Gate is the principal gate, and will be 
the principal gate for all the great commerce of all America with all the trade of 
all the great Orient. We will get our share, and a handsome share it will be, 
of all this trade here in the harbor at our own doors. The same will be true of 
Portland and the cities on Puget Sound, but it is too great, too magnificent, too 
overflowing in volume for any of us to be able to handle it all. 

The great captains of industry, commerce and finance by the Golden Gate 
have been terribly hit. The destruction of their property must be counted in hun- 
dreds of millions of dollars. But that wealth has all been created, dug from the 
earth and cropped from the soil or gathered in legitimate trade during a short 
period of fifty years by those in whose name this great wealth stood a week ago, 
or by their immediate ancestors. It is not like long-inherited wealth. The people 
who owned it a short week ago and the people who have lost it in that week know 
how it was created, know where it came from, know how to create it again, know 
where to go to duplicate it. They will re-create it, they will go again and dig it 
anew from the ribs of the ore-packed earth, garner it anew from the broad, fertile 



36 



BURTON'S BOOK. 




plains of California, gather it anew in trade with every port into which a ship sails 
on the whole earth. 

Tomorrow the ashes of the conflagration will be cool. Tomorrow a hundred 
thousand hands with steady nerve, under the direction of clear-headed leaders who 
know no such thing as hesitation, trembling, or failure, will be busy amid these 
charred ruins from Telegraph Hill, around the wharves on the water front to Rincon 
Hill and westward through the Mission and up the slopes of the once beautiful hills 
now blackened and ruined, but to be made more glorious than ever. These busy 
hands and muscular arms will be engaged in clearing away the debris and prepar- 
ing for the immediate upbuilding of the city in all her glory, even in greater pride 
than she stood a week ago. 

Looking forward to tomorrow. Let us look forward through the year. Be- 
fore the anniversary day of this terrible catastrophe shall have rolled around the 



ON CALIFORNIA. 37 

spheres again you will see rise along the wharves and over the broad plain where 
the business of San Francisco is carried on and up along the slopes of her glorious 
hills a city more magnificent than that which has perished. It will be better built, 
more handsomely built, more lastingly built, probably, than any other city of the age. 

Nature is exceedingly cruel. The scars that her blind fury have left upon 
the gray streets and the green hills of the city by the Golden Gate are horrifying. 
But Nature has her kindly moods, too. She soon heals the scars of the sores she 
makes. A year from now the city of San Francisco will be once again and more 
than ever the pride of every American heart. A hundred thousand craftsmen of 
every class will delve and hammer, lay course upon course and drive rivet after 
rivet during every day of the coming year to unmake the terrible havoc wrought by 
Nature in her mood of blind fury, and to remake the city which has been destroyed. 
The suffering of today will give place to prosperity tomorrow. Tears will soon 
be turned into laughter and sorrow into joy. The past will be forgotten in the full 
enjoyment of the future, more brilliant, more magnificent than the past 

As to the rest of the Pacific Coast, the memory of this terrible visitation, while 
it may return now and then across our thoughts, will only make a little ripple in 
the stream of our progress. We shall go right on to our manifest destiny, unap- 
palled, untroubled, unterrified, unchecked in our resolute course to make here a 
civilization in every respect the most advancd, the most glorious and the most 
blessed that human beings have ever partaken of since the first city was raised by 
human hands. 



Possibilities of the West 



THE American who has read President Roosevelt's work, "The Winning of 
the West," must necessarily imbibe a great deal of the American spirit, 
and he can hardly close the final pages without a thrill of pride running 
through his veins as he thinks of the daring adventures and magnificent achievements 
of the pioneers. 

But the "Winning of the West" has only begun. The population of the 
United States numbers not less than 85,000,000 human beings. Of these 70,- 
000,000 live east of the Mississippi River, and the whole western half of our 
country contains less than 15,000,000 inhabitants. Of course round numbers and 
not accurate statements are aimed at here. The country west of the Mississippi 
is capable of sustaining a vastly greater population than the eastern half of the 
United States. 

We used to speak of immense stretches of country in this western section of 
the hemisphere as the "Great American Desert." But this once supposed desert 
is likely to prove in time to come the most productive of all the lands in the United 
States. Some of the arid regions of the West will produce greater and more val- 
uable annual crops in the years to come than the fattest prairies in the center of 
Illinois. It is interesting to recall Horace Greeley's judgment concerning much 

4 



ON CALIFORNIA. 39 

of this western country when he traveled through it more than a generation ago and 
said that it was very much Hke Hades — all it needed was good society and water. 
The good society is coming to the West with rapid strides. The flower of Amer- 
ican manhood, and womanhood, too, has been turning its face to the setting sun for 
many past years. This western country has the water and has always had it. 
The only trouble is, it is not distributed with the same regularity that characterizes 
the rainfall east of the Mississippi River. Furthermore, it is not so well distributed 
geographically in the western as in the eastern part of the continent. But instead 
of being a detriment, these conditions are likely to be made of the greatest advan- 
tage in the agricultural life of the great West. 

An Associated Press dispatch from Denver tells of the organization of a cor- 
poration with private capital whose purpose is to reclaim a million acres of desert. 
This land is arid, not because rain does not fall contiguous to it, but for the reason 
that the rain falls in a few months in the year. This Denver corporation will build 
a reservoir to cover twenty-four square miles, with an average depth of thirty-five 
feet, and thus store the surplus waters of the Platte River. It is estimated that 
38,1 50,000,000 cubic feet of water is wasted yearly in the floods that sweep down 
the Platte. This water, if it can be stored in reservoirs, will irrigate the million 
acres controlled by this corporation, and on these lands homes will be built for a 
hundred thousand people. The cost of the dam is estimated at about $4,000,000, 
that is $4 for each acre in the area controlled by the syndicate. As this land lies 
today without irrigation possibilities, it is not worth over $2 or $3 an acre. With 
water applied to it, it will be worth, according to its general characteristics, from 
$50 to $100 an acre. The investment looks as if it would pay immense profits. 

Now this arid land has been proven time and again to be composed of the 
most fertile soils known in the world. Without water these lands are mostly a 
barren waste, but once apply moisture to them in a scientific and regular way, and 
their productiveness is amazing. The advantage of cultivation of lands by means 
of artificial irrigation over the natural rainfall is thoroughly established in the minds 
of western people. Dependent upon the rainfall, the farmer is subjected to the 
caprice of the weather. One year the rainfall is deficient, another year it comes 
in floods. In the one case his crops fail for lack of sufficient moisture, and in the 
other case, not only his crops, but his lands are washed away by torrential floods. 
Under the irrigation system he applies the moisture just as it is needed, in the very 
nick of time to produce the best results, and there can be no such thmg as failure 
of crops. The farmer is not dependent upon the rainfall for his plowing, his seed- 
ing or his harvesting. He can turn the water into his irrigation ditches at pleasure 
and plow as early as he likes. Once his soil is turned up, he can put his seed in 
the ground at any time that seems fit to him, and the great beauty of this system 
is that in these arid regions the harvest time almost always brings ideal weather for 
gathering all kinds of crops. 

Furthermore, under this system it is possible to produce not only one crop a 
year as where we depend upon natural rainfall, but anywhere from two to six crops 
a year, according to climatic conditions. By judicious rotation of crops and scien- 
tific fertilizing, such as the intelligent farmer of the day is perfectly acquainted with, 
there is no danger of exhausting the soils. As a matter of fact, the abundantly 
rich soils of these western arid lands will produce prodigious crops for many years 
without any artificial fertilization. Of course the skillful farmer will take due care 
not to deplete his soils, but will begin to fertilize, not after they have been exhausted, 
but before that point has been reached. 



40 



BURTON'S BOOK. 




LOBBY HOTEL ALEXANDRIA, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA. 



These million acres to be irrigated by this great enterprise form a little patch, 
a microscopical speck upon the map, compared with the billions of acres all over 
what was once known as the Great American Desert. Private enterprise is supple- 
mented in numerous places by government enterprise under the Reclamation Service, 
and the public lands of the United States, which seemed ten years ago about to be 
all absorbed, leaving no more comparatively free farms for American citizens, now 
reach out in an almost limitless extent. The settlement of the great West is just 
begun. The population of the present time is advancing at a tremendous pace. 
From this time on the growth of population west of the Mississippi River will be 
many times greater than east of that stream. It will be the enterprising, the adven- 
turous and energetic who will come into this great western country to develop its 
agricultural and other resources. Of course, with the prosecution of reclamation 
by private and government enterprise and the natural growth of population there 
will open up vast and various fields of development in mining, manufacturing, in 
the founding of cities and towns, and all the various branches of general business 
must multiply throughout all this great western country. Here lies the land of en- 
terprise, the opportunity for winning riches as well as fame. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 

September Golden Days of Glory 



O CALIFORNIA, full of glory are thy days of golden sunlight; changeless 
as thy mountain heights whose rugged heads have looked down upon gen- 
erations of men cradled m thy arms smce first the human face looked up 
at thy skies; changeless as the unfathomed depths of thy primeval seas, yet changeful 
as the purple shadows that creep from dawn to sunset, along thy deeply- furrowed 
brow; changeful as the ripples which each light breeze stirs upon the surface of 
those seas and the glories of thy sunlit days. 

Fervid is the hue of the green velvet mantle with which thou dost wrap thy 
fair form when spring first breaks in new-born glory on thy plains and sloping up- 
lands, on the hills that nestle like young giants at the feet of parent peaks whose 
tops are crowned with snows of long-lost ages. More fervid is thy robe in early 
summer embroidered with the flaming cup of myriads of poppy flowers, and pranked 
with the cream of countless lilies spread with wings as of the butterfly, and star- 
flecked with the blue lily that lifts its head upon a slender stalk graceful as an 
oread's walk, and lit with the gentlest tint the summer sky puts on. 

But oh, thy glories these sunlit September days outvie all these earlier days of 
the round year. Like the master of the feast thou art so lavish of thy gifts that 
thou dost keep the best wine of all thy glories to thy mature season. The vivid 
emerald of the early spring, the yellow flame of the full summer, the spotless purity 
of thy orange blossoms, the golden flood of all thy mustard fields, all yield to the 
ripe glories of these early autumn days. 

Almost the full tale of months has been counted out by the clockwork of 
revolving suns, and all their days have poured upon thy plains, thy rising slopes, thy 
towering peaks, thy orchards and broad meadows floods of sunlight white as strings 
of diamonds. Thy seas have rolled their sapphire floods and broken in pearly spray 
around thy feet. And not a brilliant ray, not one soft tint of dawn or sunset, not 
a fleck of color from all thy flower-decked meadows has been lost. They have 
all been gathered, blended, mixed and combined upon thy hillsides, in thy vales, 
along thy plains, and now break forth in these late weeks of the expiring year in 
a mantle more glorious than ever wrapped the form of the greatest monarch who 
ever lay in state to be mourned by his people. Regal are thy autumn robes. It 
is the crown of all art's empire that crowns thy brows. Majestic, queenly, assert- 
ing the right of empire over all that knows the name of beauty, thou dost sleep, 
so calm, so peaceful, so entrancing in this thy ripest, fullest beauty of all the seasons 
with all their glories as they come and go. 

O golden glory of California brown autumn days, what power can break thy 
spell upon the soul? The light breeze scarcely stirs the brown leaf that glows 
beneath the fervid suns of these fast-approaching days of the dying year. The 
bird a-tilt upon the slender reed scarce rocks in the glow spread upon all around 
him. The purple hills sleep like some dead giant monarch of the eldest days. 
The shadows sleep in the deep vales as if the world and time and all that belongs 
to both had been arrested in mid-flight and bid stand still forever. The boat out 
in the bay with a world of white canvas spread rises and dips upon the surface of 
a placid sea, recalling the poet's line, "As idle as a painted ship upon a painted 
ocean." 

The domestic cattle by the stream seem like dreams, or daylight phantoms, 
so possessed are they with the spirit of this time when everything breathes peace. 



42 



BURTON'S BOOK. 




RAYMOND HOTEL, PASADENA, CALIFORNIA. 

The alders by the bank scarce move a leaf. The dragon fly hangs poised in all 
his splendor over the deep pool, a vain rival of the glory of the scene. And amid 
all the gorgeous quiet the beasts stand knee-deep in the cool stream, as motionless 
as the cloud th^it hangs m mid-heaven. 

From afar comes now and then a softer breeze that seems a stranger in this 
scene. It is mild and gentle as the sister breeze, but there is on its breath a scent 
of southern seas. Far behind comes an echo of broader pinions, the sweep of 
mightier wings and cloud-compelling in its somber aspect. It whispers now, but 
the whisper is a warning of days when the sun will be darkened, when all this 
golden glory of the September day will have its end. It tells of a resurrection of 
the seasons of days of mighty showers, of a new mantle of velvet green to be woven 
for the fair form of our lady of the suns. The birds know the language this 
strange breeze brings. The seeds which the poppy shed nearly a year ago hear 
the whisper as they sleep upon hillside and lea, in dale and along the plains. The 
birds and the flowers all understand every accent of this message from far-off seas, 
and they whisper of it each to the other, and the birds prepare a new song for the 
new spring, and the flowers begin to rub their glorious eyes open from sleep. 

So the seasons come and go, changing from glory into glory, and after all 
it is hard to decide which is fullest of majestic beauty, of regal splendor, of queenly 
grace. The black clouds will rush warm and moist some day upon us from tropic 
seas and pour their liquid pearls on the land. Next day the California sun in all 
his undimmed glory will break out and kiss each opening germ into a new life of 
brilliant beauty. The one day of rain will be followed by a month of clear blue 
sky, so that sea and sky seem one. And all the myriad race of flowers will step 
forth in all their stately grace, in all their brilliant hues, in all their modest meek- 
ness, and each will do homage to the rich soil whose lap is their cradle and to the 
vivifying sun whose touch is their life. 

And so they are all, in spring with its showers, in summer with its flowers, 
in the fall with its fruits, all days of glory which crown the fair brow of our lady 
of the suns, brilliant, beautiful, bountiful, glorious California. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 43 



California Today and Tomorrow 



THE State of California spreads about 750 by 350 miles, extremes, both ways. 
The area is 1 58,360 square miles. Laid along the Atlantic Coast the 
State would reach from Maine to Florida and stretch back well into Ohio 
at Lake Erie. Squared and laid on Spain there would be a surplus for that coun- 
try of nearly 37,000 square miles. Shaped like Italy and laid on that peninsula, 
California would overlap into the sea by nearly 50,000 square miles. California 
is, therefore, well up toward a third larger than Italy, and the figures include Sicily. 
The population of the Atlantic Coast from Maine to Florida numbers far 
above 30,000,000. The population of Spain is about 1 9,000,000, and that of 
Italy somewhat over 33,000,000. California has not yet 2,000,000 souls within 
its borders. 

From Maine to Florida, reaching back from the ocean to Buffalo and Pitts- 
burgh, there are nearly sixty cities with 40,000 inhabitants or more. One has 
about 3,500,000 and one over 1 ,300,000. There are eight more with over 200,- 
009 each. Spain has two cities with about 500,000 souls each, one more with 
over 200,000, and another with more than 100,000. Italy has a dozen cities 
with over 50,000 inhabitants. Eight of these have more than 100,000, and three 
of tliese number over 500,000, one having 750,000. In California there are only 
two large cities, and they number only about 300,000 for one, Los Angeles, and 
about 400,000 for the other, San Francisco. 

Let us glance down the years a little bit. When California has the popula- 
tion of Spam, how much busmess will her people be doing and what will be the 
aggregate wealth of the State? What will be the population of Los Angeles, and 
what will business and residence property be worth? 

The soil of California is richer than that of New England, New York or 
Pennsylvania. It is as good as the best in Spain or Italy. The mineral wealth 
of California is far greater than that of any of the territories compared here. Do 
not forget our undeveloped mineral wealth, iron particularly, of which there is much. 
The climate of California is more pleasant and salubrious than that of Spain 
or Italy. Its scenic attractions are far greater. We do not forget the wealth of 
historic and artistic treasures and the glamour of legendary lore that Italy and Spain 
may boast. But we have some ruins of our own and relics of a civilization that 
antedates that of Rome and Seville. The Aztecs were here before the Scipios 
invaded the Iberian peninsula with their Roman legions, and the Cave Dwellers 
basked in the suns of Arizona before Hannibal crossed the Alps or before the first 
stones were laid in the "Walls of lofty Rome." 

It is true that more than twenty centuries have rolled by in the revolving years 
since history reveals the Spanish people to our view. But remember it is only about 
three since the Pilgrims landed at Cape Cod and the Cavaliers at Cape Hatteras. 
Our Atlantic Coast has seen more history made in 300 years than Spain in 2000. 
The development of industries and the growth of population in the strip of coast 
between the Bay of Fundy and the Keys of Florida far outstrips in the century 
just closed all done in Spain since the days of Scipio, and in Italy since those of 
Caesar. 




Parkinson & Bergstroni, Architects, 



C. Leonardt, Builder. 



HOTEL ALEXANDRIA AND SECURITY BUILDING, SPRING AND FIFTH STREETS, 
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 45 



The Development of One Generation 



ON Appomattox Day a body of about 300 citizens of Los Angeles and 
its environments met at The Outpost, at the mouth of a caiion in the 
mountains back of Hollywood. Withm a few rods of where the big 
United States flag was flung to the noontide breeze were hotels, banks, finely ap- 
pointed stores, and homes of magnificence, surrounded by grounds as beautiful as 
could be found withm the limits of the United States. Among the men who stood 
around the flagpole were several, not of extreme age by any means, who in their 
early manhood had shot deer on the sides of the hills surrounding this canon. The 
whole plain a generation ago, as far as the sweep of the eye would carry, even to 
the ocean shore, was a pasture where flocks fed, with scarcely a house in sight. 

Go back the same space of time, a generation, and another great plain swept 
down from the mountain base along the east side of the Arroyo Seco and stretched 
for miles eastward along the course of the San Gabriel River. It was, like the 
plain below Hollywood, a pasture for flocks of sheep, herds of cattle and bands 
of horses. The old San Gabriel Mission nestled in its heart, the only hamlet in 
all that broad plain. There were less than a hundred human habitations along 
these beautiful mesas as far as the eye would carry. 

No romance penned by the most riotous imagination could in those days have 
pictured the transformation scene that has been wrought there in this one genera- 
tion. Pasadena is a great city, teeming with business life, with as many churches 
today as there were habitations at the beginning of the generation, with banks, net- 
works of steam and electric railroads, beautiful streets, and everything that marks 
a dense population of progressive and wealthy people. Along the bank of the old 
Arroyo Seco, at the beginning of the generation, a tangled, impassable network of 
underbrush, where hunting dogs with difficulty worked their way to stir up quail 
for the hunter to shoot, there are today the homes of half as many millionaires as 
thirty years ago there were habitations in the whole valley outside of San Gabriel 
Mission and the village of El Monte. 

So these transformation scenes stretch all over Southern California. The 
valley of San Bernardino was known for its rich agricultural characteristics as long 
as a century ago. It attracted the eyes of the earliest American settlers more than 
half a century ago. But at that time. Riverside was a sheep pasture which for a 
few months in the year supported upon it one sheep to the acre. The Riverside 
of today is a city which dazzles the eyes of all beholders by the beauty and lux- 
uriousness of its setting. It is a city in every sense of the word, with a population 
of exceedingly prosperous people of high intelligence and high refinement. There 
are more banks in Riverside today than there were people on that plain when John 
G. North began the foundation of the present prosperous community. One might 
roam the world over to find anything more beautiful than Magnolia avenue, with 
its long parallel rows of trees whose branches interlace above the tracks of the 
electric cars which run its whole length, and over the broad level street, the delight 
of the automobile people of the day. Mile after mile on either side lie orange 
groves whose richness of foliage and profitable products far outmeasure anything 



46 



BURTON'S BOOK. 



to be found in Spain, Southern Italy or Sicily, where civilization is old as the cen- 
turies. 

Between the low, marshy plains around San Bernardino and San Timoteo 
Canon, through which the Southern Pacific line to Yuma runs, stretches east and 
west a little spur of the mountains. Bring your finger-ends together with your 
thumb inside, and from the wrist to the points of the fingers you have a miniature 
model of this spur of the mountain. A generation ago one could have bought the 
whole strip of territory for a dollar an acre. 

It is but half a generation gone since the Smiley brothers secured 200 acres 
about the center of this little ridge. The world does not know today a spot of 
ground more beautiful than this. It would be exceedingly difficult to match it 
anywhere upon the globe. On these 200 acres lying 1 750 feet above sea-level, 
with the great San Bernardino Valley stretched far below on the right as one looks 
westward and the narrow San Timoteo Canon lying on the left, winding roads 
terraced and walled to the extent of three miles have been built at enormous ex- 
pense. On every little corner and patch of ground have been planted orange trees, 
forest trees or ornamental shrubs or flowers until there are said to be something over 
2000 different botanical varieties on this little spot of ground. 

The Smiley brothers were twins, born of Quaker parentage in Philadelphia 
nearly eighty years ago. They amassed a fortune of many millions in the man- 
agement of tourist hotels in the Shawangunk Mountains. One of them, A. K. 
Smiley, still survives. He spends $15,000 a year in keeping these grounds in 
proper order, and there is no park in Los Angeles more carefully kept than these 
200 acres. The climbing roses in these early spring days clamber twenty, twenty- 
five, thirty and even forty feet into the branches of the forest trees, and then like 
bursting skyrockets fall in many-colored sprays to the ground beneath. 

These beautiful grounds are open to the enjoyment of every person of good 
conduct who will pass through them, revel in their beauty and leave them unmo- 
lested. There is absolutely no restriction. They are free to the general public to 
enjoy all the wondrous beauty of the spot itself, and all the magnificent vistas of 
views revealed from one spot after another around these winding roads. 

Below lies Redlands, on the side of a hill apparendy as barren as Smiley 
Heights was a generation ago, now, like Pasadena and Riverside, a great city of 




Hunt & Gray, Architects. 

HOME OF GILBERT B. PERKINS, OAK KNOLL (PASADENa), 
CALIFORNIA. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 47 

wealth, intelligence and refinement. The copper kings and other great industrial 
captains of the day who amassed immense fortunes in millions are coming year by 
year to make their homes upon the crests of these beautiful hills. From far across 
the valley, from scores of miles up on the mountain side, the waters of the Santa 
Ana River have been taken out, treasured in reservoirs, and then piped down the 
mountain and across the valley to these hills above and around Redlands. 

The one century of American history counts faster than a millennium of Old 
World achievement. Years with us now count faster than centuries in the past. 
In fifty years California has acquired a population of nearly 2,000,000. In 
twenty-five years Los Angeles has grown from 1 0,000 to 300,000. In seven 
years from 100,000 to 300,000. 

We can all recall the California and the Los Angeles of the past. We can 
see the California and the Los Angeles of today. We can look into the future 
and see the California and the Los Angeles of tomorrow. Is there anything to 
keep the population of the State from growing to equal that of Spain, that of Italy, 
that of our own Atlantic Coast? What is it? Is there anything to prevent Los 
Angeles from growing to the dimensions of Milan, of Rome, of Naples, of Madrid, 
of Barcelona? What is it? Why should not this city, in time, rival Boston? 
Will it be long until we can knock the rim off of the Hub, so far as size goes? It 
may be some time before we make Philadelphia jealous, and we may never come 
quite to the stature of Great Gotham. But what shall hinder us from contesting 
the palm for population with Buffalo or Pittsburgh? 

There are still great opportunities for the young man of today to follow the 
advice of Horace Greeley, and also follow the sun to the West, and there grow up. 



June Roses, June Brides ! 



THE combination is as natural as that of the spring rains, the warm days and 
the poppies. 
"In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast; 

In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest; 

In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove ; 

In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." 

In the spring, surely enough. And spring is not until June is, except, maybe, 
in California, where all the year is spring, where all the year the roses bloom, and 
where all the year a young man's fancy takes the natural trend of the inspiration 
of the spring. 

Oh ! reader of The Times, here in the land of lasting delight, as you sit this 
morning and sip your coffee while you gaze through a sunHt window on an emerald 
lawn and a rose garden like a rainbow, can you not go back in memory to the land 
of ice and snow whence nearly all of us came and call up in memory the thrill 
that came with the returning spring, when our hearts, the season, the leaves and 
the flowers were all young together? Can you picture a scene of those young 
days? Was there then in your mind a "fair young blossom that grew and flour- 
ished" by your side, that seemed to fit so harmoniously into the great concert of 
nature as a perfect note in a perfect chord? In your mind's eye can you see it 



48 



BURTON'S BOOK. 




John Parkinson, Architect. 
CALIFORNIA CLUB. 



AUDITORIUM IN DISTANCE. 



C. T^eonarilt, 
CORNER CENTRAL PARK. 



still as in reality in the days when your heart, the "fair young flower," all the 
flowers and all the world were young together? The miracle of that glorious time! 
And the most wonderful miracle amid all the wondrous and miraculous world was 
the miracle of loveliness, the "fair young flower" at your side. So wondrous fair, 
so miraculous was it to you that you felt constrained to say, "Nor is there doubt 
of any miracle save that life's longings and its hopes could die." 

The glory of the June landscape, of the June woodlands, of the June gardens! 
Other Junes had come and gone ; other leaves had budded and fallen ; other flowers 
had burgeoned and decayed; there had been rose bushes on which was "the last 
rose of summer left blooming alone, all her lovely companions all faded and gone." 
But that could not happen to this spring time, to this June, to the leaves that rustled 
in these soft breezes. The rose in our garden was more perennial than ever hung 
on the walls at old Paestum. These flowers never fade nor go from our sight ! 

Alas! other fair young flowers have grown up by the side of other men and 
perished. Melancholy days have come to other hearts. But that cannot happen 
to us, to our flower whose tendrils twine so softly around our hearts. Youth is 
too luxuriant, the blood too warm in our veins to let the icy fingers of death touch 
the flower we cherish. 

So runs the world away. Spring days come and spring days go. Each 
year has its June, and each June its crops of roses. Each generation of men springs 
young from the womb of time, and in the springtime the fancy turns the same sweet 
old way. What living nerve but thrills to the perfume of the rose or of the violet? 
What soul of youth can see the fair young flower grow up by his side, so radiant, 
so fragrant, so full of grace, so instinct with love, and not feel perforce his fancy 



ON CALIFORNIA. 



49 



go as the souls of all his forefathers went, since the first June, in the first garden 
this old world ever saw, and that first flower of womanly loveliness came there 
through the trees and flowers, stood beneath the leaves, in the rose bed, and the 
breezes rustled those waving tresses and kissed the roses in that beauteous cheek? 

June, June, thou art the crowning glory of the year! Youth, thou art the 
crowning glory of life! Love, thou art the crowning glory of humanity! Fair 
young flower, June bride, among the roses, by the side of youth, thou art the crown- 
ing glory of all the dear God made, among the creatures of the lower world, or 
among the angels that tread the vales of Paradise! 

"Nor was there doubt of any miracle save that life's longings and its hopes 
could die." So are thy hopes, thy longings, sweet June bride of this latest year 
of grace. May thy longings be satisfied, thy hopes be crowned with rich fruition. 
The old river of time flows on in the same channel it has worn deep since the days 
of the first June and the first bride. It is bearing us all forward to the same limit- 
less sea. Its course for you is back yonder amid green fields and rose beds. The 
song of the bird is in your ears; the song of life is in your heart. We passed along 
the same June hedgerows long ago and heard the same songs. The longings that 
swell up in your heart swelled in ours. The hopes that animate you we felt in 
our day. We can promise you from our experience that if you are a true and 
loving daughter of Eve your hopes shall not be in vain. 

Life has much in store for you. The old river is long. It is made up of 
many, many sunlit reaches. The flowers are sweet along the way. The woods 
drop shade on the quiet waters. The sea will come far, far ofl", broad, limitless, 
with no returning tides to bear you back upon its bosom. The deep diapason of 
its roll is in our ears. We see it open out close at hand. Fear not. The longings 
and hopes of life are not all bounded by the valley through which the river runs. 
All your longings and hopes center here by the banks of the stream this June time 
when you are a bride. But ever one and another will go on before you in a 
boat moving faster than yours. Then your longings iand your hopes will bridge 
the boundless sea, and the day will come when, borne calmly on the widening 
bosom of the great river, you will long to go out into the seemingly shoreless sea, 
and your hopes will buoy up your heart with assurance that there are away on the 
other side vales even more beautiful than these you have passed through, flowers 
sweeter than you yet have met, a perpetual June, and an eternity of changeless youth. 




EL CARMEL MISSION, CALIFORNIA. 




FAlKl'S t, §■- S-- L-'S AnGELES- 

/MoRCAN t' Walls Amhts. 



C Lieonardt, Builder. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 



The Call of the Coast 



WE all remember the wild rush out of San Francisco a little over twelve 
months ago, when the city lay in smoldering ashes. The railroad com- 
panies at that time performed one of the greatest acts of humanity known 
in history. They carried tens of thousands, perhaps as many as a hundred thous- 
and people, some of them as far east as El Paso and Denver, free of charge. 

The terrors of that frightful morning when the earthquake shook the city to 
its foundations and the conflagration broke out in a hundred points were enough to 
appall the hearts of the bravest. These refugees quietly and resolutely, indeed 
sorrowfully, announced their determination to go back to their old eastern homes 
and never return to the city which seemed doomed. 

That is a year ago, and now the railroad conductors are telling the newspaper 
reporters throughout the country of the rush of these same refugees of April, 1 906, 
back to the Coast and to the city they had left. They are said to be coming in 
hundreds and thousands to seek their old homes in San Francisco. 

Undoubtedly the prospect of finding immediate and steady employment at 
high wages is a strong influence in drawing these people back to their old-time 
homes. But that is far from the whole of the story. They have spent one winter 
in the East and have felt the rigors of eastern temperatures down to zero and far 
below. They have gone through a period of absolute death to all nature in this 
eastern winter. They have seen the trees stand bare in the cold blasts. They 
have heard the chirp of every bird hushed for weeks and months. They have seen 
the streams fettered in bonds of ice. Snowstorms have come down in blind, swirl- 
ing masses, making outdoor life dangerous. Whether they realize it or not, the 
call back to the old home is not altogether that of employment at high wages. 
They have thought of fuchsias in long clambering vines reaching to the verandas 
and housetops in their old San Francisco homes. They have had visions of hedge- 
rows bright as fire with the bloom of geraniums. They have thought of days 
spent across the bay at different points on holidays and Sundays, listening to the 
song of birds all winter long. The comfortable temperature of San Francisco 
winter weather often came back to them in the chill frosts of eastern nights and days. 

These returning refugees are only doing in large numbers what is always going 
on in ones and twos, in pairs and in families. For fifty years eastern people have 
been coming to California, and, feeling homesick, have gone back to different parts 
of the East, thinking life there was preferable to life here. But how many of them 
have ever succeeded in weaning their souls from a longing for the sunny skies, 
flower-decked fields and glorious mountain heights of the Pacific Coast? They 
may bear it for a single winter, but that is about the limit of their efforts to make 
again a permanent home in any part of the country after having once tasted the 
comforts and joys of fife in California. We know something about it here in Los 
Angeles. How many acquaintances are missed for a few months or a year, and 
then encountered upon the streets, with the remark, "Yes, I could stand it no longer; 
I had to come back to Los Angeles." 




A. B. Benton, Architect. 
INTERIOR COURT Y. W. C. A. BUILDING, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 53 



The Good Old Summertime 



THE sun is now rapidly climbing the heights of the firmament. In one more 
month he will achieve his farthest northern boundary, and then begin his 
downward course along the sky to the equator and the southern tropic, one 
to be reached three months after the northern tropic is touched and the other three 
months later. Summer is here in Los Angeles. 

The schoolboy has his eye upon the calendar, markmg the summer solstice, 
because he knows that with the highest point of the sun's northern course comes an 
end to all his school troubles. He has been counting by months. Today it is by 
weeks, and in a few days more it will be a matter of days, and finally he will 
reduce his arithmetical investigation as to the end of the term to hours and even 
minutes. A great host of clerks and persons employed in shops of different kinds 
are almost as intensely interested as the pupil in the public school. Their vacation 
is coming, too, and they are almost as eager in their counting of the intervening days. 

When to begin the vacation and where to spend it is an interesting subject 
in the minds of no end of people in this city. As a matter of fact, there will be 
no necessity for any person so favored by circumstances as to have his home in Los 
Angeles to seek a change of air. There may be a hot day or two, perhaps two 
or three hot spells between now and the end of September, but those who live in 
cities in the East or Middle West or anywhere excepting along the shores of South- 
ern California, would be highly delighted if they knew of any spot within their 
reach where the summer could be so delightfully passed from the viewpoint of cli- 
mate as right here in the midst of our city. 

1 here are many strong calls to us all to change our scenes and climate for a 
little while during the summer. Again the inhabitants of Los Angeles are pecuHarly 
blessed in having such a wide variety, both of scene and of climate, from which to 
select. Before us Hes a great stretch of seacoast, calm, with clear skies and refresh- 
ing breezes, stretching 200 miles up and down. Then around us rise the magnifi- 
cent chain of mountains, with deep canons, wooded slopes, rippling streams and 
cool mountain breezes which make it difficult to choose between the seashore and 
the hilltop. The varying scenes, both of seashore and mountain, are almost as 
imperative a call to the soul as the desire to escape from the little torrid heat that 
the summer brings us. 

It has been proclaimed to the world a thousand times over that Los Angeles 
and Southern California present the most delightful winter climate in North America, 
a temperature so agreeable as scarcely to be matched anywhere on the earth, and 
only in far smaller areas in the most favored spots in Italy and Greece. This has 
been told with so much iteration and detail that it is generally accepted all over the 
known world. But we have said too little in times past about the attractiveness of 
our summer climate. Those who have Hved long here are heard to state as their 
opinion times without number when the subject is under discussion, that in reality 
Los Angeles offers a more delightful summer climate than winter climate. Eastern 
people, without an exception, who have passed a summer or two here, never fail in 
giving voice to their astonishment that Los Angeles should be so entirely agreeable 
as a place to spend the summer. 



54 



BURTON'S BOOK. 



All through the East, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, there are 
very many more people who find it necessary to seek relief from the summer's heat 
than those who are driven away by the rigors of a severe winter. Those of us who 
can carry our memory back to the days when our homes were in that region know 
very well that we endured the cold of the winter and reached spring in much more 
robust health than we had at the end of the long, burning summer. 

The United States Signal Service has been maintained here for a period of 
thirty years. All the data are available in the records of this public office. A 
presentation of the actual facts regarding our temperature, tabulated carefully and 
with due attention to absolute accuracy, and then accompanied by comment written 




.Julin i\ Austin, Architect. 
WRIGHT & CALLENDER BUILDING, HILL AND FOURTH STREETS, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 55 

by some person of knowledge acquired by experience in a considerable lifetime here, 
and of an analytical turn of mind, capable of drawing attention to the salient facts 
in the record, would do great service in directing attention to this section of the 
country as a most desirable place for a summer home. The topography of the 
country should be dwelt upon, and the effects of the northwestern trade winds alter- 
nating with the mountain breezes that come down from snow-capped heights. 

There are from 50,000 to 75,000 tourists who come to Southern California 
during the year. Probably four-fifths of these arrive between the first of Decem- 
ber and the first of May. There is ao reason why judicious and careful work, 
done honestly and intelligently, should not result in bringing us as many summer 
visitors as we now have winter tourists. 



A Land of Gold 



IF eastern people who are prone to think that Southern California is only 
a land of sunshine and flowers and that we all have to live on unadulterated 
climate could have been at Santa Ana the day before yesterday and seen 
the parade of the fruits of the ground, it would have been an eye-opener. This is 
a display made by the farmers of the Httle county of Orange, the smallest among 
all the counties in the southern part of the State, but one of the richest. This was 
not a fiesta show of flowers artistically arranged for the amusement of the gay 
people who compose what is popularly known as society. It was not meant to be 
particularly artistic. It was an honest exhibition plainly made of the things that 
grow out of the ground. This county twenty years ago formed what might be 
called a corner of Los Angeles county at that time. It is a fan-shaped piece of 
territory stretching down both sides of the Santa Ana River, the handle being 
found at the northern end where the river breaks through the mountains above Yorba 
and widening out along the southern slope of the Puente hills westward to beyond 
Fullerton, then running down along Coyote Creek to the ocean, and on the left-hand 
side of the Santa Ana River winding around the hills down beyond the boundary 
of the great San Joaquin ranch, one of the original Spanish grants of the olden time. 
The riches of this little bit of territory are beyond comprehension to those not 
intimately acquainted with the facts. For fifty years the Gospel Swamp country 
has been a proverb among Southern Californians for the richness of its products. 
Corn has grown there of such luxuriance that a man on horseback standing in the 
stirrups could barely touch the first cobs on some of these giant stalks. The alfalfa 
meadows in this little reach of territory are of such surpassing richness that a dairy- 
man, well known to the writer, has for nearly twenty years maintained forty cows 
on one little forty-acre patch of ground out of the corner of which is taken an acre 
for the house, barns, corrals and vegetable garden. He never buys a pound of 
fodder, but always has a barn full of fragrant alfalfa hay cut from his little thirty- 
nine acres of ground. It is probably an achievement unique in the history of dairy 
farming. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 



57 



The very hills are rich in this wonderful land. As many as 225 tons of 
honey have been taken from the hives along the lower ranges of the hills. One 
bee man m the parade at Santa Ana on Wednesday had on his float a banner which 
read, "600 tons of honey, 10,000 hives." That was his industry on the hills in 
Orange county. He has been in the valley and engaged in the production of honey 
for over fifty years. Another legend upon one of the floats read, " 1 9,000,000 
eggs, worth $380,000; 255,000 hens, ducks, geese, etc., worth $140,000." Still 
another float carried a banner whose legend was, "Celery, 5700 acres, 3000 car- 
loads, $750,000." And still another representing the strawberry production of 
the county read "$250,000." 

These figures are interesting, not only to people at the East who have con- 
ceived the notion that there is nothing here but climate, but also to the few old- 
timers of the long, long ago who are left. Thirty or forty years ago the potatoes 
consumed in the little adobe pueblo called Los Angeles were for the most part 
brought from San Francisco. Both the bacon and the eggs used on the breakfast 
tables of the people of those days came from the East or the North. As to the 
production of poultry in this country, it was an immovable conviction in the minds 
of the old-timers that the keeping of poultry was an impossibihty. They got all 
sorts of diseases and perished in dozens and hundreds. The climate was different 
from that in the eastern homes from which these first settlers came, and poultry re- 
quired an entirely different regime. The mildness of the climate tends to produce 
vermin and weeds, as well as chicks and ripe oranges. In many places running 
water was unknown and people who treated the keeping of poultry carelessly found 
themselves disappointed. The vermin overran the poor creatures and sapped their 
vitality until they expired. Dirt produced hen cholera, from the lack of a plentiful 
supply of pure water. But with study and increasing intelligence in the business 
Southern California is now an immense producer of all kinds of poultry and eggs. 

Glorious little Orange county! The good people who live there and farm 
the soil are to be congratulated indeed on the benign influences of the sky and the 
fertile properties of the soil. She is a little one among the dozens of counties in 
the great State of California, but as the street phrase goes, "Oh, my!" 




SCENE NEAR SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA. 




Parkinson it Bergstrom, Architects 



C. Leunurdt, Builder. 



PACIFIC MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY, OLIVE AND SIXTH STREETS, 
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 59 



A City Rich in Resources 



THERE are more than a few cities on this good globe of ours possessing single 
advantages greater than Los Angeles has in the same line. Of course this 
city has one advantage over all other aggregations of the human race on 
the globe. It is unmatched, the climate of Southern California. But there is no 
city anywhere combining so many rich and varied advantages as does the city of 
Los Angeles. 

As a natural outcome of our climate, we have certain fruits of the earth which 
can be produced nowhere else, or if they can be, in no such rich abundance and 
perfection of quahty as here. Of course the whole of Southern California is trib- 
utary to the metropolis of the territory, the city of Los Angeles. This city reaps 
vast advantages from the 35,000 carloads of citrus fruit which are marketed from 
this surrounding territory in eastern markets year by year, returning such enormous 
profits to the tens of thousands of horticulturists engaged in their production. The 
crop of the present year, which is bringing unusually good prices, is estimated to 
return here a revenue of something like $20,000,000. Oranges and lemons form 
only one of the great crops of the country. The vineyards of Southern California 
are not so extensive as they were twenty years ago, but they are still of sufficient 
area to make large profits year by year for many hundreds of skillful vineyardists 
engaged in the cultivation of the vine and the production of wine. 

Inside this territory of Southern California, tributary in a business way to the 
city of Los Angeles, there are a great number and a very great variety of valuable 
mines. The business connected with the production of the precious metals all cen- 
ters in the city of Los Angeles. There are numerous other ores being taken out 
of the earth here, going to swell the vast volume of business done in this city. An- 
other mineral production which has added greatly to the wealth of Southern Cali- 
fornia, the city of Los Angeles among other communities, is the oil found inside and 
all around the city. 

Then, while the municipality lies sixteen or twenty miles back from the ocean, 
there are three good landing places in such close proximity to the city that they are 
practically ports of Los Angeles. Chief among these is the great harbor of San 
Pedro, which from this time on may dispute with much success with all the other 
seaports on the west coast of America for the trans-Pacific commerce to be carried 
on with the Far East. There is already a very considerable coastwise trade carried 
on at the harbor of San Pedro, and also at Redondo and Santa Monica. The 
transoceanic commerce, so far as it relates to our harbors, is still in its infancy, but 
a very lusty infant, sure to grow to Herculean stature in the years to come. 

Immediately outside of the territory properly known as Southern California 
stretches a vast semi-desert region of rough hills, great mountain ranges, and desert 
sands. If a great deal of this territory is unproductive on the surface, it is uncom- 
monly rich beneath. Arizona is a producer of enormous wealth from her varied 
mining industries, gold and copper taking the lead over all others. The same is 
true of New Mexico, and the influence of Los Angeles reaches down across the 
Mexican border, penetrating deep into the republic of Old Mexico. To the north- 




A. F. Rosenheim, Architect. C. Leonardt. Builder. 

H. W. HELLMAN BUILDING, CORNER SPRING AND FOURTH STREETS, 
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 61 

ward our railroad systems reach out into Nevada and Utah, putting this city in 
close touch from the commercial point of view with a region of great mineral wealth 
still in a state of only incipient development, but already yielding vast fortunes to 
the miners and cattlemen who have gone in and taken possession of these inland 
empires. 

From all over this vast outside territory, while the mercury is boiling in the 
tube under the ardent rays of the almost tropical summer sun, flock in here in whole 
families, armies of these miners and cattlemen to escape the torrid heat of their 
own hills and plains and to enjoy the refreshing and health-bringing breezes of the 
great ocean stretching to the west of us. 

Of course it is an old, old story, the tens of thousands of wealthy or at least 
well-to-do Americans who flee away from the approaching severity of eastern win- 
ters along about November and remain with us until the streams begin to sing again 
in their old homes in the New England States, in the Middle and Western States. 
It would be hard to tell whether winter or summer would be the best time for 
well-to-do people along the Gulf States to seek comfort in Southern California. 

These are the reasons why there is no dead season in the city of Los Angeles. 
Any other city in the world has its months of great activity alternating with months 
of deathlike stagnation. In the great western cities the building trades are gener- 
ally in a condition of idleness all through the severe winter months. In the great 
Northwest the farmer has about four months of intense heat in which to gather in 
crops which he feeds out to his stock with frozen fingers during the eight months 
of severe winter weather. In Southern California there is no cessation of productive 
crops. They roll around with the months from the first of January to the end of 
December. The farmers here are taking in revenue, if they manage their affairs 
properly, every week in the year. There is no cessation in the building trades, for 
the great influx of home seekers from the great northern regions in the winter time 
and from the torrid mining territory in the summer time creates an every-day demand 
for new houses to rent or to buy. It is an all-the-year-round scene of activity in 
the city of Los Angeles in every line of business. The eastern tourists crowd the 
stores all winter long to replenish their wardrobes in things for winter use, and the 
great hordes of people coming in here in the summer ransack the stores for thin 
wear suitable for summer days. 

The result is that everybody who will work or enter into business in Los An- 
geles and in the country around always finds a wide-open opportunity to develop 
his activities, his skill, and his strength. There is no poor class here. Every man 
who will may earn a good living, and if he is not in a prosperous condition, he has 
himself to thank, provided he has any ability, physical or mental, in any line of 
industry. 




CALIFORNIA, HOSPITAL, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA. 



if t£. ' "^'^ asRlfl^S 


< 


M 


|P1 











The Land of the West 



THE sick who seek health, the rich 
who seek wealth, young, old and 
the rest will find all desires to 
which heart aspires in the Land of the 
West. There days are all sunny; there's 
plenty of money, and life's full of zest. 
The promise is bright, for all who have 
might, in the Land of the West. 



SUNSHINE CURE, CALIFORNIA HOSPITAL. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 63 



Springtime in California 



WHAT inspiration breathes from the purple heights of Cahfornia's old poetic 
mountains on fair mornings in early March! How peacefully the sun- 
light sleeps upon these peaks! How quietly the shadows slumber in the 
deep-sunk canons where the water leaps in laughter over the rocks and the pines 
whisper in the breeze along their sides! The ocean sings a morning hymn as its 
waves ripple over long stretches of smooth, white sands, or shouts a paean of courage 
as they break against the rugged headlands where the war between sea and land has 
raged for ages. 

Three weeks must pass before the sun reaches the equator on the way north 
and brings with the spring equinox the real opening of the season of sunshine, show- 
ers and bloom. Even then the almanac will be the only index of spring in most 
parts of the country. But here the gardens are all bright with many a flower. 
The air is redolent with the scent of orange blossoms. Every wayside hedge is 
aglow with roses in full bloom. The grasses are knee deep to flock and herd. 
The landscape is as emerald as the British Isles in June or as France in May. 
Peach and apricot orchards flame in pink and purple and white along the plain. 
The air breathes a benediction of good health and the joy of existence courses in 
intense streams through every fiber of one's frame. 

How vocal is the morning with the clear notes of the mdcking bird and the 
peaceful noontide with the song of the lark! Nature calls to the enjoyment of life 
with a thousand tongues. The shadowy hands waving in the pepper tree, the nod- 
ding invitations from the graceful boughs of the tall eucalyptus, the whispering 
solicitations from the pines, all beckon and call us to the open field, to the broad 
plain, to quiet country lanes and winding roads along the streams, to deeply-shaded 
canons on the mountain side where wild bloom is springing in beauty and fragrance, 
to sunny slopes on towering heights where purple lights play all day long, and on 
up to snow-capped peaks where winter still holds undisputed sway. 

Lovely California's entrancing springtime, when the pulses beat with joy, the 
currents of the blood run in peace, where every breath is like a cup of the wine 
of life, and every view presented by uplifted height, by deep-sunk vale, by winding 
stream, by swelling plain, by ocean shore, is an inspiring poem which sings of the 
joy of being! 




INCLINE RAILWAY TO MT. LOWE, NORTH PASADENA, CALIFORNIA. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 65 



Vacation and Freedom, Breezes and Pines 



JEAN PAUL FREDERICK RICHTER makes his boy in a dream cry, 
"Oh, give me back my youth again!" What septuagenarian with wrinkled 
brow, with snow-capped head, with slow, uncertain steps saw the children 
let loose from school and did not echo the cry of the sweet, pathetic, German phil- 
osopher? Let the boys and girls enjoy their vacation days while youth remains, 
while the heart is free from care, while the rush of red blood tingles to the very tips 
of the fingers. 

It is hardly vacation yet with the fathers and mothers of the emancipated army 
of school children. These are busy days with them. There have been consulta- 
tions as to where the vacation shall be spent. There is so large a field for choice, 
there are so many places to go to, it is so hard to decide between the beach, with 
the long reaches of white sand, the ever-varying expanse of shifting blue water with 
its lights and shadows, white foam and phosphorescent lights, and the high moun- 
tains, where the sunlight sleeps so calmly on the ridge and the shadows lie so cool 
and deep in the profound abyss of the carions! 

Down on the beach the league-long rollers are tumbling in foam, shouting to 
the people up in the city to come and lie in the sand and hear the rippling waters 
sing to the children, to doff shoes and stockings and join the long-legged gulls that 
wade in the receding brine, to gallant swains and charming maids to loiter in the 
moonlight on the strand and hear the "psalm of life" chanted as sweetly as when 
the world was young. Upon the mountains the wild Howers are blooming so 
brightly that they fain would not "blush unseen," the pines sing their refrain as if 
to outrival in allurement the chant of the "sad sea waves." 

And here in the city. We hardly know it is summer excepting by the date 
of the morning paper, or by the bills coming in from the grocer and the butcher, 
the milk man and the lighting company at the end of the month. The breezes 
from "old ocean's gray expanse," with a tang of kelp in it, and the mountain winds 
with a little freshness from the snows on the high peaks, and the odor of the pine 
and sage on their breath, meet here in Los Angeles and sway the heads of the tall 
eucalyptus trees seaward and hillward so vigorously that the mocking bird is forced 
to suspend his hymn of praise for a moment to hold on to the slender twig. There 
is none of that drowsy, humid, choking quality about the air. In the zephyrs, the 
whole tree sways, bends and bows as if making a salaam to the Lord of life and 
love, as if in a solemn act of worship, in a thanksgiving from a full heart for the 
privilege of standing in a place so full of all that makes life pleasant. The mocking 
birds with their gray throats swollen as if they would burst because the hearts 
within are so full of thankfulness, are the choir in this great temple of nature, and 
the linnets tune up their second to the high sopranos above them in the trees. 

Why go away from Los Angeles for vacation? The only reason is that 
Los Angeles people are generally so well provided with means that they do not 



66 BURTON'S BOOK. 

have to scrimp. Old scenes grow dull and pall upon our hearts during the long 
days of the school year, and of the business year, and of the housekeeping year, 
and the society year, and the club year. It does us all good to have a change of 
scene, of occupation, of interest. We all come back to the familiar lawn and 
flowers, the old street and the old home with renewed zest. We are more appre- 
ciative of the kindness and good-fellowship of neighbors. But besides all this there 
is a ruddier glow of health in the cheek, a richer flow of blood in the veins after a 
few weeks spent by the seaside or on the high mountain peak. Thirty or forty 
days of tumbling in the sand, or wading in the surf puts better bone and firmer 
fiber into the "rising generation." 



The West 



THE title "The West" is an expansive term. Seventy-five years ago it meant 
all west of the Alleghanies; fifty years ago all west of Lake Erie. Now 
it means all west of the Mississippi River. Two weeks ago about 1 000 
business men from more than twenty States and two Territories met in San Fran- 
cisco to discuss the varied interests of this vast expanse of country. Delegates were 
there, too, from Alaska, and even from the Hawaiian Islands and the Philippines. 

The region west of the Mississippi embraces broadly half the territory of the 
United States. To get a line which would divide the country equally in popula- 
tion, we would be obliged to go far east of the river, and the line which would 
divide the country equally as to wealth would take us still farther to the East. 
Massachusetts is a close network of railroads; her cities and towns crowd closely 
upon one another. Nevada has two lines of railroad in the State, and only as 
many towns of any note. In all the trans-Mississippi country, railroads are far 
between, and only half a dozen large cities exist. 

To put it differently, the country east of the Mississippi is well developed, 
that west only slightly developed. East, every avenue of enterprise is crowded with 
competition; West, there is limitless elbow-room and a multitude of untrod avenues 
for enterprise. Farms east of the river must be bought at high prices; west are 
millions of acres of raw lands to be had at a few "quarters" per acre. Banks, 
factories, stores of all grades and kinds fill all the cities of the East; in the West 
capital is needed, brains are at a premium, and brawn is never idle excepting when 
it is lazy. A single example: Millions, hundreds of millions of dollars of risks 
in life insurance are written in the West and the premiums paid yearly are enormous, 
Of this business, 98 per cent, is done by eastern companies, organized with eastern 
money. Only 2 per cent, is done by western companies organized with western 
capital. It is true the eastern companies loan the money they receive here, or invest 
it largely. But this only makes the West more deeply indebted to the East. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 



67 



In the West is where all the metallic wealth of the country is produced. Here 
the meats which feed our people grow; here the great grain farmers produce the 
bread of the country. In this great West progress must be continuous and rapid. 
The railroads must be extended, new Unes built, more equipment provided, more 
operators hired and paid. Here the government is spending millions reclaiming the 
arid lands, and here the surplus wealth of the East is seeking opportunities to be 
invested. In this western country new banks must be opened, new mines worked, 
new towns built, new places of business organized. Into this great West must 
flow surplus population, swelling the volume of business in all lines. 

Into this new country, where elbow-room is so wide and opportunities are so 
many, is the place for young men of enterprise and ability to come and "grow up 
with the country." That was Horace Greeley's advice to young men half a cen- 
tury ago. Then the West meant Chicago, and those who followed the advice 
became statesmen, great business men, bankers, manufacturers, millionaires and men 
of note in many ways. Those who now hear the call of the West will be the 
great men of twenty-five years hence. Whatever may take place east of the Mis- 
sissippi, there must be progress west of the stream. The movement will be rapid. 
The West has never been held back, never will be. Business has grown faster 
than the railroads. Building more railroads will open up more territory and create 
more business. The progress of the West is an endless chain. Think of the 
growth of the United States since the twentieth century opened. It is a mere index 
of what the whole century is to witness. The men who are here now will have 
opportunity to grow; those who come will have plenty of room. When the first 
quarter of the century shall come to an end, the West will be a different thing from 
what it is today; and when the middle of the century shall arrive, the West will 
dominate the East. 

Come West to the big, broad, progressive, growing West, and partake of its 
breadth, progress and growth! 




John C. Austin, Architect. 
HOTEL VIRGINIA, LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA. 



68 BURTON'S BOOK. 

The Equinox in Southern Cahfornia 



THE summer is definitely gone. Today the sun circles the middle belt of the 
globe, and touches with his shaft of light both poles in the twenty-four 
hours, making equal day and night at all points. Tomorrow he will rise 
later and set earlier, peeping over the rim of the world for a little shorter space of 
time and shedding his beams more obliquely. For ninety days he will sink lower 
and lower below the horizon. 

This change means a great deal to those who dwell in regions where the win- 
ters are long and severe because of the short days and oblique rays of the sun. 
Indian summer, with its blue haze, still airs and moderate temperature, is a pleasure 
still in store for the East. But mild days are few, and these few uncertain. 
Housekeepers forget them as they face the prospect of the long, cold winter weeks. 
The business now is to see that woodsheds are well filled and coal bins running over. 
Farmers are making things snug in the barnyards, and seeing that the haystacks are 
weighted down with stones. Soon double doors will be brought from the cellars 
and attics. Windows will be "listed" and the house everywhere well guarded 
against the certain onslaughts which the north winds, with icy breath, will make, 
trying to invade the citadel through every crack and cranny. 

There are pleasures back yonder. We know what joy reigns around the old 
fireplace, with its big back-logs, or by the baseburner full of coal in the living- 
room, each glowing with comfort. The hghts are brilliant, and games, music and 
kindly converse defy the long dark hours, when the sun sets at 3 o'clock and does 
not rise until nearly 9. 

But we forego these hard-won pleasures here in California as we think of 
the terrors of rising from bed with the mercury frozen in the bulb, of the discom- 
forts and actual danger to health in getting about out of doors. Look at our east- 
ern friends! The house may be comfortable with heat from stoves or furnace. 
The mercury by the door indicates 80 degrees plus on the inside, and 30 degrees 
minus on the outside. A plunge from one temperature to the other 1 20 degrees 
lower, is like a knife run through the lungs. 

The outline of the picture is enough. We all know how to fill in the details. 
Heavy flannels, a big outer garment, fur gloves, earlaps to the cap, and all that 
art can do will not keep the icy air from benumbing the body, making hands and 
feet tingle, and nipping nose and ears. At best life is a severe struggle, and death 
lurks at every turn. 

Such are the reflections which the fall equinox raises in our old homes. How 
different in the new! In Southern California there is nothing of winter as the days 
slowly grow shorter. As in Minnesota or Vermont, it will be six months before 
the sun again mounts the equator. But we are not looking up double doors to see 
if they are intact, nor laying in a supply of list for the windows. Our homes will 
remain for the next six months as they were during those just passed. We feel the 
fall touch in the air, to be sure. The northwest trade winds are lulled to sleep 
and will not awaken for half a year. The southwest trade winds are just stirring. 
They may come sweeping up from the southern seas in a week, and they may linger 
on the way two months. When they come they will be delightfully warm, full of 
moisture from tepid waters, and in contact with our cooler currents or impinging 
on the cold mountain tops, will send down floods of rain to wash the atmosphere 



ON CALIFORNIA. 



69 



of dust, to swell the seeds of the poppies in the ground, to embrace with magic 
touch the roots and seeds of the grasses, and bring new life to enliven every scene 
in this winterless land. 

To the people "back East" the fall equinox means a long, severe winter. To 
us it means the return of spring. Southern Cahfornia has its seedtime and harvest, 
but its only seasons are spring and summer. Summer lay down to take a long sleep 
yesterday; spring will awaken today or tomorrow or on some day soon to come. 

Thanksgiving Day will be kept in Southern California by parties playing ten- 
nis and golf, by motor parties, by drives or rides on the trolley cars. The beaches 
will be just less crowded than on the Fourth of July, and the surf not quite so 
much "alive" with people. On Christmas the daylight will not last so long, but 
otherwise the day is pretty sure to be so mild and clear that the whole population 
of Los Angeles will spend hours out of doors, probably without overcoats or gloves, 
the girls in white shirtwaists. 

On all occasions our dinner tables will glow with flowers fresh from the gar- 
den, roses as fragrant as those of June, heliotrope untouched by cold, and the glo- 
rious poinsettia lording it over all the bloom. 

The wealth of Rockefeller may keep the house comfortable, but it will not 
prevent his nerves from tingling in the sharp frost, nor make his lungs secure from 
pneumonia. The bright suns and mild airs of California, the song of the lark and 
of the mocking bird, the perfume of the rose, the glory of the poinsettia, are all 
within easy reach of the poorest person, of the simplest child whose life is blessed 
by the privilege of living in Southern California. 

Blessed are they that live in Southern California — for this surely is God's 
country. 




INTERIOR HOTEL VIRGINIA, LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA.. 



70 BURTON'S BOOK. 



A Great School Center 



FLAMING mesas bright with golden poppy cups, orange groves rich in luscious 
fruits, and similar products of the sun and the soil are not all these lands 
of invigorating air and blue skies have to boast of. Men grow stronger, 
women fairer under these favoring influences than elsewhere. Figs, honey and 
wine were not the things that made Athens famous. The old poetic mountains of 
Greece breathed inspiration from their changeless, ever-changing peaks. The 
myriad smiles of the blue Aegean not only made the fig trees bear abundantly, but 
they also compelled Homer to write his solemn spondees and Sappho to sing in her 
light trochees the passion of the heart. The bees of Mt. Hymettus still hum; but 
we turn to the days when the agora echoed to the voice of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle 
and Sophocles. 

The roses still bloom on the walls of Paestum, down south of Naples, but we 
know more of Italy when Virgil and Horace sang, when Cicero and Tacitus wrote. 
The verses of the poets, the fiery oratory of the declaimers, the picturesque prose 
of Livy, all reflect the golden summer days of Italy. 

The same influences tinged the brushes of the great painters of Greece and 
Italy. Isaiah and John the Divine could not have composed their books in the fogs 
of Boeotia, nor in those of London. Michaelangelo would not have left such rich 
colorings from his brush if he had lived in Iceland or in Patagonia. 

What Greece and Italy were to the ancient and medieval periods of history, 
California will be to the twentieth century and to America. "The Isles of Greece," 
which Byron sings about, have no inspiration in overbending sky, in surrounding 
sea, in uplifted height, that is not renewed here along the golden shores in these 
lands of the setting sun. Excepting for the "rime of age," Naples and its bay 
are in no respect more attractive than the coasts of glory that lie all along the calm 
Pacific, where "league-long rollers" break in music on the strands. 

There is an instinctive knowledge of these conditions which is actively at work 
impressing the civilization just budding into promise in Southern California. There 
is no community in America, even among the oldest of them, where more attention 
is paid to intellectual culture. Among our richest possessions already are our pri- 
vate schools and colleges. They are found everywhere fairly crowding one another, 
yet all prosperous. There is scarcely a religious body that is not represented in 
Southern California by one or more schools of learning. Some denominations have 
a complete system of schools from the most elementary kindergarten to the most 
elaborately equipped university. There are in these connections normal schools 
where the training of teachers for all the grades is carried on with the same scientific 
attention to every detail as in the State establishments. 

There is hardly a branch of art that is not well represented here in special 
schools. There are establishments in which special attention is given to teaching 
on every musical instrument, and the instruction is by masters of high repute. Vo- 
calization receives as much attention as instrumentation. Physiologists claim that 
the atmosphere of California is tending to a modification of the vocal organs which 



ON CALIFORNIA. 71 

will make the native sons and daughters of California, and those whose youth is 
spent here, a race of singers. 

There are schools where the dramatic art in all its branches may be learned, 
and the atmospheric influence which makes the high soprano and the lyric tenor will 
influence in the same way the voice of the speaker, declaimer and reciter. Greece 
gave the world Demosthenes and Lysias. Italy gave Cicero. The actors of these 
countries were no less renowned than the orators. The native sons of California 
have already won high honors as orators and we have given the world several 
famous singers. The stage has been enriched by many Californians. 

Los Angeles boasts distinction from her noted painters and sculptors. The 
artistic temperament is very rapidly developed and the number who are seeking to 
break into the hall of fame by and by is increasing in a geometrical ratio. 

Demand always calls out supply. No branch of art lacks its school here, 
and the teachers are recognized for their great ability. The patronage is so great 
that it enables these schools to secure the best talent, and the competition is so great 
that it compels enterprise. 

The private schools of Los Angeles and of all Southern California reach out 
widely for patronage. The inter-mountain States, with their prosperous communi- 
ties, are not supplied with the elaborate educational systems of older communities. 
Hundreds of pupils come to Los Angeles to enjoy the high privileges which abound 
here. From the far-away East come thousands of children in delicate health who 
are not strong enough to pursue a severe course in study, and whose lives are in 
jeopardy from excessive cold in winter and heat in summer. This lovely land of 
ever-temperate climate, sunny skies and balmy air attracts these children from all 
parts of the country. They come here and become robust, acquire energy and 
take hold of their studies with vigor, achieving marked success. 

These splendid schools of general learning and of special branches of art are 
destined to make California more famous in the future than the State is now. They 
will give the coming generation the statesmen, the successful business men, the actors, 
singers, speakers, authors of the day. The Southern California people will lead 
all others in their highly developed mental faculties, in their grasp of art and in 
their skill. 



California's Greatest, Most Lasting Asset 



WE MAY produce for I 00 years 50,000,000 barrels of oil annually. Our 
citrus crop may grow to 50,000 carloads a year. The raisin crop may 
be 1 ,000,000 pounds, the prune crop quite as big. We may dig $20,- 
000,000 of the precious metals from the earth. And all these will be important 
in our growth, development and wealth. 

But the everlasting, most important of all our assets has been, is and will be 
the climate. We do not mean that the raisin, prune and citrus fruit crops all de- 



72 BURTON'S BOOK. 

pend on the climate. We take the dimate alone, for its own direct influences, and 
assert that it will ever be the indestructible and most important asset of California. 
It has done more to attract people here than all other influences combined. It is 
drawing more here today than all other influences, and this will be the case next 
year and 1 000 years hence. 

Here we have a country where winter and summer the temperature is so equal 
that life is a perpetual benediction, instead of a struggle for existence. There is 
no suffering from excessive cold between December 1 and March 31, There is no 
suffering from excessive heat between June 1 and September 30. There are two 
hours more sun a day in midwinter than farther north, and two hours less in mid- 
summer. Blizzards, cyclones, storms are unknown. Out of the year there are 
not more than an average of fifteen rainy days. The worst winters there are never 
twenty-five rainy days. High winds are as unknown as frosts. In winter time the 
coast towns are full of people lying in the sand, of children playing in the surf. In 
midsummer there is no necessity to seek the seaside. 

For those who long for change there are beaches almost without number, and 
mountain glens finer than the White Mountains or the Adirondacks boast. 

Overland trains are crowded these January days with persons whose homes 
are all the way from the Bay of Fundy to Denver, pressing as fast as possible to 
get to Southern California, not because of its products, but for its climate. The 
weather department warns these storm refugees not to flee to Florida or any other 
Gulf State, for the storm is on the wing and headed for the whole Gulf Coast. 

There is no place in Europe where a climate like ours may be found. Let 
no man deceive you. The writer has seen the whole coast line of the Riviera 
blighted by bitter frosts for weeks. He has shivered under the cutting, icy mistral 
at Turin, and seen icicles as thick as a baseball bat hanging from the eaves of houses 
in Genoa. The Arno at Pisa was a solid sheet of ice. The sleet at Rome was 
polar. At Naples the tramontane wind was violent and bitterly cold. There was 
more bad weather in Italy from the Cenis Pass to Naples, from Genoa to Milan 
and Venice, between January 1 and February 28, less than sixty days, than in 
Southern California in forty years. 

In spite of these drawbacks Italy has attracted the people of Europe for 3000 
years, and is drawing more visitors there this year than ever before. For all this 
experience there is not in Italy a seaside hotel like the Virginia, nor a hotel in Naples 
or Rome like the Alexandria or the Green. You cannot go to the Bay of Naples 
and have hotel accommodations such as you may find at the Potter in Santa Bar- 
bara. No place on the Italian lakes has a hotel like the Glenwood, the Casa de 
Loma, the Maryland or the Raymond. 

We have a climate superior to that of any of the peninsulas of Southern Eu- 
rope, and we have accommodations far superior to what may be found at any resort 
in the Old World. It is easier to get here, and cheaper to live here. The visitor 
hears his own language, his children attend the schools of their own country, and 
he has the same church that he attends at home. 

This is the great tourist season, and for three or four months our great mag- 
net, the climate, will draw to this coast 75,000 visitors. Five years hence the 
figure will be 1 00,000, and so it will grow for 1 00 years to come. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 73 



The New Beulah Land 



THE rain is falling here softly in Southern CaHfornia these mid- January days, 
while all over the country everything is frozen hard as steel and the snow 
lies ten feet deep in many places. Trains come in full of refugees from 
the cold blizzards to bask in sunshine and sit in the parks under the bowers of roses. 
For a day or two the rain may veil the sun and make the streets muddy. It will 
not last long. Within a few days the skies will be like turquoise, and the trees 
will be vocal with the songs of the mocking birds, pouring their carols from swelling 
throats. Our landscapes are already green as emerald seas, and the fences are all 
ablaze ^with roses, geraniums and poinsettias. 

The hotel men report their houses full of guests and more coming. By Feb- 
ruary they say there will be 100,000 winter guests in Southern California. We 
must be as kind to these strangers as the skies are benign. Take no advantage of 
the crowd, but give them the best at reasonable rates. If the big hotels are full 
there are scores of small ones in Los Angeles and in the cities about here. There 
are comfortable apartment buildings where a family may find contentment for a 
time. The sunshine is as warm around the family hotel out in the beautiful resi- 
dence districts as near the big one in the business center. The skies are bright 
everywhere, and the parks are nearer in the outer portions than in the center. The 
tourists come and go, making room hourly at the hotels. If quarters are not to be 
had today, they may be found tomorrow, so our visitors will find all they may desire. 

They should not be in a hurry to go back. For the next 200 days there will 
not be ten when the face of the sun will not smile his blandest from the heavens. 
There will not be one day of very high wind, and not five when the atmospheric 
movement will be more than a gentle zephyr. If there is a day or two of sharp 
chill in the morning, that will be the whole story, and on such days wraps will be 
an incumbrance from 8 o'clock in the morning until 6 in the evening. 

There is no other spot in the civilized world where the climate is such a bene- 
diction as here. There may be spots where there is more flavor of the antique, 
more of the artistic. But there is none where nature is so prodigal of her gifts. 
Not on the globe is there 1 500 miles of country like this Pacific Ocean shore from 
the bay of San Diego to the mouth of Puget Sound. And this is in the very 
zenith of its glory now until the end of July. California is at its best from these 
mid- January days until the end of June, and the northern coast is at its best from 
June I to the end of July. 

The attractions of this stretch of the country are more various than those of 
any other. In midwinter the inland country is full of charm. The temperature 
at Yuma is perfect. Arizona has all the brilliant coloring of the Bay of Naples, 
or the hills in the island of Capri. In a few weeks Southern California will gleam 
with the natural bloom of wild flowers, making a scene which Italy in May cannot 
match. The poppy will gild square miles with the gold of its delicate chalice. 
The mustard will spangle the fields with yellow like a world on fire. The yucca 
will raise his tall, straight shaft from the midst of the waste places twenty feet high, 
with a mass of blossoms spotless as the snow. When the fields lose their charm. 



74 



BURTON'S BOOK. 



if that be possible, the sea will call in a song as seductive as the siren's. Long 
stretches of gleaming sand with the waves rippling at one's feet will spread a bed 
as soft as down for rest while the winds murmur a lullaby and the waves will sing 
an accompaniment soothing as Mother Nature can make her hymn of rest, peace 
and health. There will be the tang of the salt water in the air, and the plash of 
the breakers on the rocks at the headland. 

If that palls on our surfeited senses, let us betake ourselves to the mountains, 
where the pines catch the breezes from the ocean and take up the refrain that makes 
all nature one "long, sweet song." The tang of the seaweed will give place to 
the spice of the evergreen. The glint of the sunbeam on the wave will yield to the 
shadows of noontide in some glen where the fern is dank and where wild flowers 
attract the humming bird and the bee. The high Sierras will call where the snow 
still lingers in midsummer and where the giant growths of the elder world still linger, 
loath to leave a world so fair. Here we shall look upon the sequoias 6000 years 
old, which were contemporaneous with the extinct mammoth. The snow flower, 
more beautiful than the hyacinth, may be gathered, and we shall see the mountain 
flood plunge 1 000 feet in a wild leap to the valley. 

These 100,000 tourists, who are fiUing California these winter days, are wise. 
They have heard and heeded the wise advice, "See America first." For the next 
six months Western America presents greater and more varied attractions than any 
part of Europe. From here to Alaska stretches finer scenery more easily reached 
than in all the Old World. The wealth of gorgeous wild bloom in California and 
Oregon woods cannot be matched in Europe. There is not a spot like the Yosemite, 
no park like the Yellowstone, no snow peak as full of impressive grandeur as Shasta, 








' 1 



f 

iilt;iiil|iiii,ii^ 
IlilJLUIll 



1 




C Lt'onardt, Builder. 
CORNER MAIN AND FOURTH STREETS, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 75 

no streams of the majesty of the Sacramento or the Columbia. Europe has no 
trees Hke the giant redwoods, no undergrowth so splendid in its varied bloom as the 
whole country along the Sierras and the streams all the way from Mexico to the 
Yukon. The wild azalea is as gorgeous in its rich blooms as the rhododendron 
around the Lakes of Killarney, and there are a million of our flowers to one in 
Ireland. 

Many of us go to Europe who have small appreciation of its arts. But God 
has made no eye that has not a natural love of the beauties of this beautiful world 
in which we live. Hundreds of our people go to Switzerland and are ashamed 
when asked about the Yosemite or the Grand Canon, which they have to confess 
they never saw. He who has floated down the Columbia in its majestic sweep to 
the sea sees more water than fifty Rhines hold. 

Come ye 1 00,000 tourists of wise mind. See America first. You will en- 
joy every moment of your stay, regret you have to leave, and be better able to 
appreciate other countries after you have seen your own. 



Summer Climate of Southern California 



THE Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, with its usual foresight and energy, 
has taken up a timely propaganda in the thorough advertising all over the 
East of Southern California as the best summer climate in North America. 

Now, there is not one letter of exaggeration in that statement. There is no- 
where in North America, and it may very well be questioned whether there is in 
the world, another summer climate in all respects equal to that of the Pacific Ocean 
littoral, say from Cape Mendocino to San Diego. One might enlarge this line to 
the northward as far as Santa Cruz. Certainly that charming city on the sea, as 
well as picturesque and woody Capitola a little farther south, and many nooks all 
along the coast, would be difficult to match anywhere in the world. 

These are facts clear to the minds of all who have spent even a single summer 
anywhere along the coast in the whole extent outlined above or in any of the towns 
or even stretches of country inland for a distance of from twenty to sixty miles. 
Every kind of taste and every type of invalid can find just what suits him somewhere 
in the territory here outlined. There are seashore, plain, upland and towering 
mountain top to pick and choose from. There are quiet village spots nestling along 
the coast, by the streams, on the plains, and up into the foothills, as quiet as a 
Sunday morning in any New England village from the Bay of Fundy to New 
Haven. Almost in the center of the territory Los Angeles sits, a veritable queen 
among cities in her magnificence, luxuries and beauties. 

While these facts are as well known as the letters of the alphabet all over 
Southern California, there is, perhaps, no feature of life in Southern California so 
much misunderstood away from this region as our summer climate. The impression 
abroad is almost universal that this is a region of torrid heat during nearly the whole 
course of the summer months. The truth is that Los Angeles is dependent upon 



76 



BURTON'S BOOK. 



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CALIFORNIA FOOTHILL COTTAGE. 



remote districts in the central part of the State for early fruits of all kinds. The 
heat of the San Joaquin Valley, of the Sacramento, brings into maturity every kind 
of fruit weeks earlier than they mature in the warmest nooks in Southern California. 
Yet outside of this region of exceptionally delightful climate during the summer 
months the impression prevails that it is one of the hottest corners in all creation 
from May to October. 

But instead of this torrid heat, the ocean breezes flowing in from the Pacific 
in the steady "trades" from the northwest moderate the temperature to such a degree 
that discomfort is rarely felt anywhere along the seacoast or back into the interior 
up to the mountains. Whenever we have a hot spell here it is never for longer than 
from three to live or six days at a time. It does not last all day long, the point 
of highest temperature being usually reached from 8 to 1 o'clock in the morning, 
and rarely continuing after 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Whenever the temperature 
does get to a little excess durmg these hours, it is because the prevailing winds come 
down from the north or the northeast, and in such a case, they blow over hundreds 
of miles of territory, bald desert, and dry as punk. They reach here so exhausted 
of dampness that no discomfort is usually felt, even with the mercury well up in the 
nineties. These are not newspaper statements, made for advertising purposes. 
They are the result of most careful observation and analytical comparison of the 
records kept by the United States Signal Service, covering a period of fully thirty 
years. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 77 



Summer in California 



SUMMER is at the acme of all perfection in California. There is no winter 
here, but summer reaches nearer to perfection in June than in January. 
May, with its wealth of wild bloom in the hills and on the plains and its 
rich luxuriance in the gardens, where cultivation replaces with its handiwork the 
natural growth of the wilderness, is somewhat more gorgeous than the month of 
March. But there is no week in all the year when there could not be held a flower 
festival in Southern California. May and June are brighter than the earlier months, 
and later the plains lose their verdure and the poppy crop is all faded excepting in 
deep mountain canons ; also the mustard has gone to seed on the plains. 

The wild flowers of California merit a botanical Audubon to paint their petals 
and to describe their habits. The ordinary dwellers in this land of perpetual de- 
lights and the tourists who pass through the densely-cultivated portions of the coun- 
try by train or automobile catch only a glimpse of the flora of this land of perpetual 
sunbeams. Civilization with its orange groves and modern dwellings, with lawns 
spangled with roses and a hundred species of domesticated flowering plants and 
shrubs, has banished Flora and all her beauteous train to the mountains and to the 
desert plains. It is only those who penetrate the mountain fastnesses or who go 
far afield beyond the boundaries of the orchards and the alfalfa fields who see 
what nature does in the way of painting the landscape in hues that mock at the 
most gorgeous rose garden the landscape gardener can plan, plant and bring to 
bloom. 

Nor does one have to go far away from the "choice residence section of the 
city" to find broad stretches of wash, of desert or mountain slope that still preserve 
the California type of landscape, which, fifty years ago, was as wide as the boun- 
daries of the State. The argonauts who "came the plains across, or the Horn 
around" in the pioneer days, were bewildered as they looked upon the plains and 
hillsides of this State in the midwinter days, in spring and in early summer. The 
pioneer's wagon or the stage coach was the only express train the first comers had 
to travel in. Let one of them tell you of a night ride through the mountains, or 
over the plains, and the breaking of day from the first gray streaks of light until 
the sun rode high above the horizon. The dead level tone of the landscape beneath 
the stars or the ghostlike shadows cast by the pale moonbeams slowly gave way to 
faint gray of the early dawn, the trees rose to view, and giant cactus like a Briareus 
or a fiend stretched out snake-like arms as if to grapple you and carry you to the 
lower world. The hair of Medusa never looked so demon-like. Then the trees 
took on a hue of dark green, color after color was brought out, as if thousands of 
unseen hands, with an artistic skill more than human, were at work with brushes 
wide as the horizon, laying on a thousand colors at each stroke. The sun shot 
out over a mountain peak, and there lay the trackless, houseless expanse far as 
vision could descry, a covering of lacework and tapestry finer than weaver ever 



78 BURTON'S BOOK. 

turned off of a loom, and gorgeous as the brightest bow the sunbeams ever painted 
in the sky. 

The CaHfornia of fifty years ago with its small population, all delving in 
mines, gathered in a few embryo cities or scattered widely over the State in sheep 
camps, with all this abandon of floral beauty, may still be seen by those who in 
May or June will venture into the mountains or face a long wagon ride over some 
still uninhabited plain known as a desert. Put to rout before the relentless forces 
of civilization with its bank-books, profit-and-loss ledgers and modern improvements, 
the artists of the sun and showers who made the California of the argonauts still 
linger lovingly in these out-of-the-way places, and as the sun creeps up from his 
annual visit to the southern hemisphere, and as the south winds come laden from 
broad leagues of seas with moisture in their heart, these unseen artists mingle the 
morning sunbeams with the crystal drops of rain and dew, and still paint what is 
left to Flora of her ancient domain with the same artistic enthusiasm as of old. 

Here a great yucca, or Spanish bayonet, shoots two to ten feet from the white 
sands of a wash, in a week, and breaks out into a thousand broad petals white as 
the most spotless lily in the garden. He seems to be a sentinel sent out to watch 
for the approach of civilization, with plowshare, hoe and spade, coming to wrest 
another league of land from the poor remains of the domain of the goddess of the 
flowers. Half a mile farther in is the picket Hne, and then behind the whole army 
of beauties stretch along the hills, cumber the plains, lie in security up the canons, 
or spread in wild profusion over what we call the desert. In a bed of white sand 
where civilization with all its art could not make one blade of grass grow these 
caretakers of the goddess of the flowers cause broad green leaves to spread saucer- 
like a half a foot in a circle and in the heart of this spring up half a dozen petals 
broad as a hand, white as light and streaked with pinks, or purples, scarlets, or 
blues, that put to the blush the cunningest handiwork of a Millais, a Daubigny, a 
Claude Lorraine or a Constable. Where the hard rock presents a brow of flint 
to the sun's hot rays these artists of the sun and showers spread leaves like emeralds 
and then paint in between tiny petals red as rubies, as if they were eyes of fire 
looking out from the heart of nature. 

Here in the valley subdued by cultivation we see only straggling monuments 
of the work of these lace weavers and color mixers of nature. The broadest ex- 
panse of poppies we ever see here is only a handbreadth to the square miles of these 
golden cups that crowd thick as grass in some spot far away from the reach of the 
hands of the vandals who despoil Flora of her treasures. The pioneer of the old 
days knows this, and delights in a day or two free from care to go far from the 
sound of the busy city, from the shriek of a locomotive whistle, where he can forget 
the "progress" of half a century and go back in spirit to the "brave days of old" 
when he and California were young together, and when the queen of the flowers 
held her court all over the State and reigned in undisturbed serenity, monarch of 
all she surveyed. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 79 



The Sea! The Sea! 



44 A ND there shall be no more sea." So said John the Divine in that trance 

/\ on Patmos when he thought he "saw into the future far as human 

eye can see," Science tells us that the time foretold by the prophet 

will come, when all the waters on the globe shall have been evaporated. But 

then the earth will be as lifeless as the burned-out moon. 

The seer on Patmos thought the earth would become a paradise when the 
seas were all dried up. Perhaps he had been out in a storm on the waters of the 
Levant and had suffered from seasickness which made the tossing of the blue wave 
so disagreeable to look at. 

It all depends on the point of view. When the Greek general, Xenophon, 
had led his 1 0,000 troops for weeks from the banks of the Euphrates near Baby- 
lon north along great streams, beset by hostile armies, and through the rough 
mountain passes of the Kurdish tribes, as the men saw the Euxine from a high 
peak one mighty cry went up : "Thalatta! Thalatta!" "The sea! The sea!" 
What comfort, hope and joy there was in those blue waves through which they 
were to sail back to Athens! 

When the earth becomes what the Apocalypse says it will be, a sealess ex- 
panse of barren rocks, men will have become disembodied spirits and will see with 
other eyes, have other aspirations and tastes than in the present state. While in 
the body the sea will be what it has always been, a source of infinite delight. 

Surely Southern California would be bereft of at least half of its charm if 
it could be said of it, "And there shall be no more sea there." Of all the elements 
that go to make this "land of pure delight" not one plays a more prominent part 
than the long line of sea coast which lies for hundreds of miles basking in the 
noontide sun to the south of the broad valleys and below the towering mountain 
peaks. In these midsummer days the sea is an inspiration and an uplift to body, 
mind and soul. A single day at one of the beaches will cure the most melancholy 
person of the blues. One returns to the city feeling years younger. The world 
is all bright in his eye. The sky is bluer from the reflection of the sea left on the 
retina, and the flowers are fairer than they were yesterday. 

There are 100,000 persons in Southern California who will bear testimony 
that these things are so. Saturday they were at one or another of the many 
beaches, and, like the vase around which the scent of the roses clings after the 
flowers are withered and dead, the sheen of the sea, the glint of the blue waves, 
the bronze of the sea weed, all linger in our sight. Nor is it all the kaleidoscope 
colors rich as a rainbow that make up the charm of these sunlit seas. There is 
the music as well. It sobs out the life of the ripple that dies in the vain attempt 
to reach grass roots and the flowers along the bluff. It sings in the paean of victory 
the breaker utters as it climbs the shingle and washes back a portion of land. It 
thunders in the hoarse threat of the billow that breaks against the rocks and warns 
the headland that in time it must crumble under these repeated onslaughts. The 
deep diapason rolls upward over the land and echoes on the mountain top. And as 
the wavelet sobs and the breaker sings, the breeze whispers its lullaby of peace to 



83 



BURTON'S BOOK. 




AVALON BAY, CATALINA. THE MAGIC ISLE. 



sea and land, and the tempest adds its voice of terror to the billow's war cry, telling 
the earth that ere there be no more sea the days will come when there will be less 
and less of the land. 

And in the turquoise skies there will float on the broad wings of the winds 
fleecy clouds as white as wool which will cast their shadows on sea and strand, on 
wave and bluff, playing a game of tag with each other as the clouds chase one 
another across the sky and their shadows on the earth beneath. And while we gaze 
on all the beauty of the scene and listen to the concert of sea and air, we drink in 
health, good cheer, hope and life with every suspiration. The artist, the naturalist, 
the invalid, nearly all find what they are looking for, most in need of. Here is 
the moving picture for one, the habits of various forms of life for the other, health 
for the weak, rest for the weary, a new joy of living for all. 

There are enough of these beaches for all the dwellers west of the crests of 
the continental divide, and there will be standing room, elbow room, breathing room 
for as many more. The beaches of Southern California stretch 250 miles, and one 
is at a loss to decide which is the most picturesque. The breezes are as balmy at 
one as at another. The same blue sky bends over all, and the same blue seas 
pulsate at them all. The great curve at Santa Monica Bay is one glory, and the 
broad channel at Long Beach and San Pedro, with the blue hills of Santa CataHna 
in the distance, is another glory. Santa Barbara, so like famed Naples, has a 
beauty difl^erent from the coast at other points, and north to Port Harford the 
mountains come down to cool their feet in the waves, giving a charm all its own 
to that long stretch of the golden coast. 

The golden coast it is in very deed. In the far north the charm of the 
landscape is the vivid green. These are the lands of the sun and he has gilded 
all these shores with his own rich colors. It may take time to reconcile the eye 



ON CALIFORNIA. 8l' 

to the golden brown of a California summer. But the education will come in time, 
and once acquired the hold is more intense than that of any other scene. The sea 
weed floats in glittering bronze upon the almost purple wave. The hills around 
are a brown in which the sun's rays are reflected back like the glint of an old coin 
of gold. 

It must be tame to tlescend from these scenes of nature's most glorious art to 
consider what man's feeble efforts have done along these golden shores by waves 
of blue. But the charm has exercised a spell over the souls of 100,000 beings 
who make their homes beside our sunlit seas. Tens of thousands come in summer 
from torrid plains and burning mountain brows where they dig the metals from 
the earth to dwell amid these scenes of loveliness, and to enjoy the comforts of 
fresh ocean breezes and the health that comes from an atmosphere always pure. 
In winter they flock from the rigors of ice and snow to live for months by waters 
whose temperature in January is only five degrees below that of July. 

Those who spend days and weeks in contemplation of the things nature has 
done to make these golden shores so glorious must devote an hour now and then 
to think of what man has done to make life at the beaches as comfortable and as 
luxurious as in the largest city in the world. Long Beach, one of our seaside re- 
sorts, boasts a hotel rich as the Orient, which "showers on her kings barbaric pearls 
and gold." As nature has made these beaches the glory of all seasides, man has 
eclipsed his own efforts elsewhere in making them beautiful with all the builder's 
art of the twentieth century can do. 



City in Country 



MR. ROOSEVELT'S commissioners to inquire into the conditions in coun- 
try life paid Los Angeles a visit a few days ago. They looked through 
the orange groves and on the alfalfa fields of Southern Cahfornia, and, 
like the Lotos Eaters of the poet, thought they had indeed come to the "land of 
the afternoon," where Hfe was "one long sweet song." They wanted to stay here 
and never go away. The conditions everywhere were ideal, unexcelled. The 
commissioners were forced to "tear themselves away" with violence, or the charm 
would have held them away from their duties. 

The orange grower's house looked to them like a palace. The farmers here 
were riding about in automobiles. Cement sidewalks run along the country roads. 
The farms are hedged in with ever-blooming roses. Electric lights and gas to cook 
with are common. The farmer leaves the hired man to cultivate his grove and 
he goes to town to attend a meeting of bank directors, of which he is one. No 
commission, were it appointed by ten Presidents, a king and a kaiser, could find a 
rift in our farmer's lute. 

Afraid of the lotos infatuation, the commission got away, refusing the open- 
handed hospitality of our farmers. They are still in California, but not in Southern 
California. Up on the Sacramento River the farmers had a different story from 



82 



BURTON'S BOOK. 




COACHING IN CATALINA, THE MAGIC ISLE. 

ours to tell. "Long hours of toil, lack of school facilities, little, if any, social life, 
dearth of competent help, and poor prices for products, were a few of the reasons 
given why farm life is distasteful." 

We are quoting verbatim from the press report of what the farmers up there 
told the commission. 

One may here quote Hamlet and say: "Look on this picture and on that." 
They are very different indeed. No wonder so many hundreds of persons from 
all parts of the country are unhappy until they get to Southern California and 
secure a piece of land where they may make a country home, where all the old 
delights of the luxurious lotos are just reversed. The old Roman sighed for rus 
in urbe. The Southern Californian finds a happier life in conditions which are 
urbs in rure. 



Midsummer Melody 



SING a song of sunshine, faces full of smiles, twenty thousand tourists traveling 
many miles. When they get to this Coast all begin to sing, "Never such 
a country on the earth's round ring." Racing o'er the mesas, skimming by 
the streams where the rose is blooming and the sunlight gleams, up to cool, dark 
canons, by the ocean's shore, never saw a country like to this before. Up among 
the tall pines on the mountain's brow; out among the breakers where the swift 
yachts plow; over on the islands fishing for big trout; up among the dark pools 
fountains clear break out; no matter where you're going, no matter how you go, 
the land of lasting sunshine has no match here below. Thus tourists go on singing, 
thus they write to friends of all the many pleasures to life the Southland lends. 
Hurry up the good roads, dig the waterway, make your land more glorious with 
each passing day! All the world is waiting, sighing till they may for this bright 
land of beauty be upon the way. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 83 



The Lands by Sunlit Seas 



THE sailor boys of the great white fleet have finished their arduous range 
practice with the big guns in Magdalena Bay which our friendly neighbor, 
Mexico, loaned us for a month. Now the ships have ploughed their way 
through placid seas following the wake left by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo's ships 
over three and a half centuries ago, and will rest in the bay by the Silver Gate 
where the Spanish admiral first flaunted the standard of a civilized nation. 

Now begins real life for these brave defenders of the Starry Flag of Glory, 
whose broad field of blue speaks hope to all longing hearts the world around. In 
one more week the sixteen magnificent envoys of peace will ride at anchor in our 
own waters and the men will realize how beautiful this world is and how incom- 
parably beautiful is their own land among all the lands of all the continents. Many 
of the sailor lads know the Hudson with its highlands, beautiful New England with 
its wooded hills, the great West with its broad plains, great lakes and noble rivers. 
But they have a revelation before them and will have these spring days all the way 
to Puget Sound all along the lands by the sunlit seas. 

We must see that the sailor men shall feast their eyes to surfeit (if that is 
possible) on the glories of this first stretch along these shores by these sunlit seas. 
Take them all over Los Angeles, the fairest daughter among the sisterhood of cities 
in the world. Roll them over the plains billowy with sloping hills and the tower- 
ing mountains with snow-capped peaks standing guard over the orchards where 
grow the golden apples of this last Hesperides creation ever can show to dazzle 
the eyes of men. Feast the sailors' eyes, tired with watching the moving pictures 
made by Neptune, with glimpses of Orange Grove avenue, Pasadena, with views 
along Smiley Heights at Redlands, and along Magnolia avenue at Riverside; ex- 
hibit the great panorama of beauty in changing scenes all along the mountain base 
from this city to the mountain barriers at San Gorgonio Pass, and they will declare 
that the valley with its spangled knolls where the mustard sets its crowns of gold 
and the broad blotches of fire-red poppies gleam like the stripes of Old Glory 
wavirig in the breeze has no match on all the broad continents of all the world. 
Go with our guests into the canons where, in spite of the noontide blaze of the sun 
in a cloudless sky, the shadows sleep as peacefully as night, and show them the 
pied beauty of the wild lilac, the variegated cactus blooms, the gloss of emerald 
hue on the leaves of the arbutus, the modest white little flower the evergreen oak 
puts out as germ of the acorn from which other oaks shall grow to brave a thou- 
sand years the rainstorm and the wind. Do not permit these guests of the nation 
to get away and miss any of these features which make this land the glory of all 
lands. 

Remember we have rivals at this season of the year. When the sailor boys 
get to the great bay of San Francisco they may be taken over the Santa Cruz 
Mountains to the city of Santa Cruz, where in the soft May airs the woods will 
blaze forth in wild azaleas massed in an abundance that glows over the mountains 
as far as the lookout on the highest point can see. 



84 



BURTON'S BOOK. 



And Puget Sound may be dreary indeed when the long weeks of rain pour 
out their floods, but in June the earth has few fairer spots where the sun's rays 
paint more glorious pictures. In fact, if the fleet could go up the Sacramento 
River and thence to the headwaters of the Willamette and so on to the Straits of 
Fuca, there would be at this season one long incomparable panorama of beauty and 
grandeur of scene, each succeeding stretch trying hard, although in vain, to outshine 
the last one passed. The long stretches of Puget Sound, winding like a great ser- 
pent scores of miles between cloud-piercing mountain ranges, present scenes in their 
way unmatched upon the globe. 

From San Diego to Tacoma the crews of the fleet are to see these many hun- 
dreds of miles of lands by the sunlit seas. As the summer suns in July become 
torrid they will sail away, following the path marked on the waves by the rays of 
the setting sun, to stop a few days in the Hawaiian Islands in mid-ocean. They 
will see the tropics again in the Philippines as well as the Flowery Kingdom of 
China and artistic Japan. The antipodes will spread their attractions before their 
eyes. 

But when they get back to the Atlantic ports and scatter for a furlough over 
the country to their old homes they will tell it all, and when the story comes to an 
end their voices will sink to quiet tones, a far-away look will come in their eyes, 
and there will pass before their memory the Southland scenes, and they will declare 
that the earth had nothing to show to compare with the orange groves of Southern 
California, with the flower-studded plains and hills where the mustard waves its 
flag of gold, where the poppy glows, the mariposa lily spreads its wings of painted 
enamel, and in the dark caiions the mountain sides are studded with the lilac bloom, 
while the mocking bird makes the whole atmosphere vocal with his song, and the 
lark's shrill treble fills in the intervals of silence. 




Harrison Albright, Arcliitect. C. Leonardt, Builder. 

THE GRANT HOTEL, SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 85 

Sunny Hours, the Thrush's Song, the Sheen 
of Poppy Fields 



SPRINGTIME is in bloom in California. The almanac says February 3, 
but the skies say May. The fields are green with grass six inches high. 
The orange groves are golden with ripe fruit. Windows stand wide open; 
fires are out; warm airs come in at every opening; children play on the lawns, bare- 
headed, joyous, riotous in the very lust of living. 

The heavens are vocal with the song of the full-throated mocking bird as he 
sings to his mate on the nest. Tourists come in from the country with arms full 
of flowers. They are wild flowers, too, gathered on the slopes of the hills. In 
the sunniest spots the poppies are already out. They know, as the birds know, 
that it is springtime here, and that they need fear no snap of cold to nip the flower 
or make the nestlings shiver. 

Gardeners are busy. Nearly all cut back their rose bushes a month ago. 
The young leaves are crowding out from their sheaths to catch the sunbeams and 
to make a frame of green around the new buds which will burst into flower in a 
short time. Orchardists are busy plowing between rows of trees to keep down the 
rank growth of weeds. Peach trees are breaking into bloom here and there, al- 
monds, apricots and apples will make the slopes pink and white in a few days. 

February is an incongruous name for the second month in the year where 
streams are still ice-bound and the landscape shrouded in snow. The name comes 
from Italy, where the first warm days of the new year are beginning to be felt. 
But here the name is more appropriate than at Rome or Naples. Now the rain 
is coming down, cold and drear, along the Corso in the Eternal City, and the 
tramontane sweeps down to the bay under Vesuvius as he puffs out smoke. If 
rain falls in Southern California it is warm, and if winds blow they are gentle and 
mild, tempered by the waters of southern seas. 

Se we revel in the springtime in these earliest February days in Southern Cali- 
fornia. At night the mocking bird trills his lay; by day the lark looks out on the 
hillside where the golden poppy blooms and shrills his treble to the unfeathered 
nestlings under the wings of the mother bird. 

It is good to live in a clime so fair, to enjoy a temperature so mild, to revel 
in a springtime that comes so soon after the fruitful autumn is gone. We love our 
California, because it is a gentle and a beauteous land. 



La Cote d'Azur 



IN winter at Paris a railroad company makes a great stir with its "Cote d'Azur" 
train. This runs from Paris south along the valley of the Rhone by Mar- 
seilles, on down the Riviera. When rain is falling in the gay capital all day 
and night, congealing as it touches the ground, when the basins around all the foun- 



ON CALIFORNIA. 87 

tains on the Avenue Champs Elysees are frozen, when the sun peeps over the edge 
of the world at 8 o'clock, at noon gets about 30 degrees high, and sinks behind 
the ocean at 3 in the afternoon, the announcements of the "Cote d'Azur" train 
look very attractive. 

Today there are about 80,000 Americans in various parts of Europe renew- 
ing their youth, getting inspiration for work when they come back, or indulging in 
the age-long pastime of killing time. These tourists who have been in Paris during 
the last two months have been diligent readers of the advertisements concerning the 
"Cote d'Azur" train, and they have daily filled many compartments in the cars, all 
flitting southward where suns are brighter, days longer, and life more comfortable. 

"Cote d'Azur" means the "Coast of Blue." We have our own "Coast of 
Blue," and it is just as turquoise as any on the Mediterranean. It has not been 
known so long, but it has come to be known as well. To the 80,000 Americans 
who throng the Blue Coast of France and Italy are added more than as many more 
from all parts of Europe. We get more Americans to visit our Coast of Azure 
than the Riviera, but so far we do not get so many from Europe. There are prob- 
ably today basking in the sunshine of California along our Coast of Azure 100,000 
visitors. Most of these are Americans, but there are sprinkled in among them a 
good many from all parts of the world. The charm of our Coast of Blue, seas of 
turquoise, skies of azure, purple mountains and plains bright with golden poppies, 
is known in all parts of the civilized world. The fact is well established that in 
many respects our "Coast of Blue" far surpasses Europe's "Cote d'Azur." In- 
valids from London who have tried the Riviera, Naples, Sicily and Algiers, have 
come to San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and up to 
Monterey and Santa Cruz, with the decision founded on experience that our climate 
is more equable, more bracing and invigorating than any of those on the other side. 
As the years pass this fact will be impressed more deeply on the minds of the peo- 
ple until to our 1 00,000 winter visitors, mostly American, we shall add as many 
more of our own people, and then another 100,000 from Europe. Why should 
we not? The statistics show that our climate is evener in all respects, less subject 
to change, visited by less severe frosts, afflicted with no such winds as blow down 
over the Riviera and the south coast of Italy. The modern American home, hotel 
or boarding-house is far superior to those in any part of Europe. Means of trans- 
portation are much better. The tourists who crowd the "Cote d'Azur" mostly 
speak English. Along the continent they are at great inconvenience from not know- 
ing the languages spoken. Children must, for the most part, be left at home be- 
cause of the schools on the continent. Church services are conducted in an un- 
known tongue, and many forms of religion are not represented at all. 

Ruins and art? We are not so destitute in this respect, either. California 
is the only part of America which can boast of such vestiges of a past civilization. 
We have them. They are quite similar to those of Spain, or the north of Africa, 
not very different from those of Italy or France, and quite as interesting as those 
of the Rhine. 

Let us make a little excursion on paper along the American Cote d'Azur. 
Place the starting point at Tia Juana, where we join Mexico. Here we see the 
California Indian and the Mexican in their native simplicity. They are not less 
interesting than the Swiss or the Breton peasant. At San Diego we encounter the 
first mission of the Spanish padres set by the side of the "Silver Gate," a bit of 



88 



BURTON'S BOOK. 



sea that for sparkle cannot be matched on the Mediterranean. Here are magnifi- 
cent hotels, finer than any on the European Cote d'Azur. A ride to Los Angeles 
along the seacoast, where the waves ripple on the sands or break on the rocks, with 
the great mountain chain off to the east, has no counterpart in France or Italy. At 
San Juan Capistrano is the next old mission church, a noble pile indeed. 

Los Angeles is too well known to need comment. We will hurry past the 
great metropolis of the Great Southwest, with its hotels more magnificent than the 
palaces of kings, with a score of beaches, from Naples to Ocean Park, Long Beach 
and its Hotel Virginia, San Pedro with its splendid harbor, and Santa Monica set 
on a bay whose scenery is not to be excelled. Let us pass the pleasure to be found 
in rides on electric cars through a thousand orange groves, past a hundred beautiful 
towns, under the shadow of mountains as grand as the Apennines. We need not 
speak of Pasadena, with three or four hotels as grand as any at Monte Carlo, with 
streets as beautiful as Paris, nor need we dwell on Riverside, with Magnolia ave- 
nue, not inferior to the streets about the handsomest towns on the Seine, and hotels 
more picturesque and comfortable. Neither need we stop to visit Redlands on the 
mountain brow, with scenes as impressive as Tivoli, discounting the flavor of age. 
Here, also, are hotel accommodations that surpass those in Europe's playground. 

Hasten up the coast, to Santa Barbara. We have seen the old Plaza Church 
at Los Angeles, and the Mission San Gabriel. The queen of missions is at Santa 
Barbara. It is certainly as interesting as Notre Dame de Paris, or as St. Michael, 
Brussels. And the Bay of Santa Barbara! It is absolutely as enchanting to the 
lover of nature as the Bay of Naples. The city nestles at the foot of magnificent 
mountain heights, blue as summer skies, rugged as the Pyrenees, wooded like the 
Black Forest. Afar seaward lie the Channel Islands in the blue ocean, and the 
slopes at the foot of the mountain chain are rich with varied orchards. A sump- 
tuous hotel and others to suit any purse, any taste, are here. 



^fiBS%re«!fSiiia&Sfe«3S*^i 



jE^S^atvr.^.'-*^- 




(.CD PEOPLE 



FOUNDED AND MAINTAINED BY ESTATE OF LATE JOHN E. HOLLENBECK. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 89 

On we pass, by Paso Robles, with its hot sulphur springs, more heahng than 
Baden Baden, then to Monterey and on to Santa Cruz. There are the mission 
ruins of San Carlos and San Miguel. There are a dozen stopping places on the 
way. There are hotels, where every comfort may be had. The road runs every- 
where close to the ocean, but high above the shore, presenting a panorama of inde- 
scribable charm at every turn. Inland lie the mountains, snow-capped at the high- 
est points, wooded at all. The road lies through sloping hillsides and level plains, 
rich in ranches and farms. Now in February the carpet is emerald and studded 
with flowers. As the weeks pass the scene will become a little more brilliant, until 
in midsummer all turns to a golden brown. By June the wild wealth of bloom on 
the mesas and through the woods will ravish the eye that looks upon it. 

Think that we are in the early days of February! If you have been in Italy 
or France at this season you will remember cheerless days, frozen fountains, driz- 
zling rain, rough winds. By March will come a sudden change, and the tempera- 
ture at Rome and along the Riviera is likely to range from very hot to very cold. 

There are no such drawbacks to our "Coast of Blue." June will be as 
lovely at Santa Barbara as April; July and August will be delightful anywhere 
from San Diego to San Francisco, while at Paris and along the "Cote d'Azur" of 
France and Italy the temperature will be intolerable. 

There we have sketched our "Coast of Blue." It stretches 600 miles along 
the ocean, under the shadows of the great mountain ranges, by brooks and rivulets, 
over mesas, through orchards, by pretty towns and past artistic ruins. And all 
the time the ocean swells beyond the beach, and the waves roll over white sands or 
break on bold headlands. 

We have seen the Cote d'Azur in all its glories, and have spent years, on the 
"Coast of Blue." We have ridden from San Diego to Puget Sound in stage 
coaches, before the days of railroads, and crept slowly over the poppy-decked mesas 
in prairie schooners. To us the "Coast of Blue" far surpasses in varied interest 
the "Cote d'Azur." 



Oh, to Live for the Days A-Coming! 



THE song runs, "Oh, to call back the days that are not." The sigh of the 
heart in Los Angeles is, "Oh, to live for the days a-comingl" 

The days that are are all right. March is on the calendar, and the sun 
is as bright as May. The vales are as green as an Irish June. The plains are 
golden as the floors of heaven with the mustard in flower and the slopes gleam like 
a world on fire with the myriad chalices the poppy lifts to hold the brilliant sun- 
beams of the noontide. The breezes murmur music as gentle as a dream, and they 
come pure as snow crystals from their long trip over 10,000 miles of unpolluted 



90 



BURTON'S BOOK. 




Morgan & \VaUs, Architects. Weymouth Crowell, Builder. 

STORY BUILDING, BROADWAY AND SIXTH STREET, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA. 

seas. The shadows lie asleep in the mountain gorges and the silver spray breaks 
on the beach like a voluntary on an organ in a church of a Sunday morning. 

But the glory of the coming days in this land of all delights! The city is a 
foretaste of the Nevs^ Jerusalem as it is, and no vales of Paradise could outvie the 
beauties of all the land that lies between the plashing surf and the pines on the 
mountain crest that whisper a lullaby to nature. Here are beautiful streets, fair 
parks with their little crystal seas shaded by foliage as bright as the tropics can 
boast. All this is most inspiring. It draws to these lovely shores tourists in tens 
of thousands and settlers by the thousands. The present is a dream of existence 
in this fairest of all cities in fairest of all lands. 

But, oh, for the days that are coming here! The present, rich as it is in 
blessings, is as nothing to the future. As things are we draw families in thousands 
year by year, also visitors from all the earth. How shall we accommodate those 
who will come when Southern California is made as incomparable by art as it is 
by nature? The highway commission has been at work. Its plans are ready to 
submit. Soon active work will be in progress to make a network of roads to reach 
all points in the country, from the silver sand on the beach where the waves are 
stayed to the crests of the mountains where the sunlight gleams. The roads will 
wind along wooded vales, by rippling streams, amid rich orchards where golden 



ON CALIFORNIA. 91 

fruit is half hidden by waxy leaves. They will pass by peaceful villages and pros- 
perous cities. They will run along the base of towering mountain heights and they 
will climb the crests following gorges, where midday is dark as gloom. And all 
the other counties will join hands and the tourist may pass from county to county, 
from vale to vale, from valley to valley, from crest to crest, and all the way will 
be full of quiet pastoral scenes, or rural homes of transcending beauty or of thrilling 
grandeur in the heights. 

The counties shall not surpass the cities. Pasadena plans a park which will 
defy comparison with anything the most progressive cities of the Old World can 
boast. Counter-sunk in the bed of the Arroyo Seco, this proposed park will have 
bearing orange orchards in its lowest reaches and the Alpine edelweiss will be 
found at the head, far up the heights of the mountain range. We shall have no 
ruin like Hadrian's villa or the castles of the Rhine, but we shall have living splen- 
dors of our own creating which will outshine the fading glories of the Pincian Hill 
or the Bois de Boulogne. 

Yesterday the school children of Los Angeles planted thousands of little trees 
which in the days that are coming will cast their umbrageous shadows over the 
noontide landscape and intensify all that Nature has done in her lavish generosity 
for this land so like the paradise of myth and inspiration. 

Oh, to live and enjoy the days that are coming, coming quickly, coming soon! 
It is only the far advanced in years that must sigh in vain to see this country in all 
its coming splendor when the art of man shall have made the most out of the en- 
dowment that Nature has spread abroad here in this modern Garden of Eden, this 
latest, fairest, best of all the playgrounds of our race. 



Where No Rock Its Shadow Throws 



WHAT a picture of desolation that is which shows a country whose only 
shade is in the shadow of a great rock. That is what the old Hebrew 
writer said when he wanted a simile which would be impressive. "Like 
the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." That was his graphic sentence. 
The picture fell upon the mind of the man who had crossed the desert with an im- 
pression most grateful. Picture it to yourself as you think of the bald, awful 
waste of sand, as level as the sea which the modern poet paints in the line "As 
idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean." Imagine the African sun at noon- 
tide beating down upon that shadeless sea of gleaming sand. The traveler toils 
wearily on and there is no place in sight where a little respite from this pitiless heat 
and glare can be found. 

We have this sunshine here, but not the sand. How different the picture of 
California landscapes with the orange groves stretching away to the mountains, and 
the green vineyard overspreading all the plain. 

We have here something else not known in the desert. We have roads, and 
they are traveled by tens of thousands. Neither orange groves nor vineyards are 
the place in which to seek the shade in a hot day. But we have conditions not 
found in that land where only the rocks can cast a shadow. Trees will grow 



ON CALIFORNIA. 93 

along our highways, and their fragrant shade is refreshing in very deed. Trees 
grow faster here than in almost any other land. And what a variety! What 
vegetable growth so delicate in its lace-hke fohage as the pepper tree? What casts 
so perfect a shadow and what shade so fragrant ! We have, too, the palms of 
the tropics and the acacia of the semi-tropics, each in a hundred varieties. There 
is also the eucalyptus family, so manifold in its variety, growing so rapidly, so free 
from insect pests, many of them flowering so gloriously. 

The rural districts are getting wide awake to the possibilities of beauty and 
comfort in bordering our highways with rows of these trees. Redlands is enlisting 
the cooperation of her neighboring cities and towns in a scheme to lay out a con- 
necting system of perfect highways, and to line these everywhere with trees. 

We think we have a lovely land here. And so we have. But what will it 
be ten years hence, when it has an increase of half a million or more inhabitants, 
with twice the number of homes that exist today, twice the number of groves of 
trees and acres of vines, cut in all directions with fine roads, and these shaded with 
hundreds of varieties of trees which separately constitute the glory of many lands, 
but which all combine to make this the delight of the eye and the full contentment 
of the heart? 

All communities should follow this example set by Redlands. From seaside 
to mountain base, and up the canons to the top of the peaks, let the good roads 
idea become a fact; let us shade every road with a wealth of various foliage such 
as no other land can boast! 



Sick and Homeless 



THAT was an act of humanity performed by the officers of the Associated 
Charities when they called attention to the case of consumptives, in the last 
stages of the disease, ruthlessly sent here to certain death, penniless and 
far from friends and home. 

It is not a new thing in this land. For many, many years the lure of the 
sunht air has drawn the sick in all stages of suffering. Those who come in time 
and with means to secure proper care and nourishment in some cases do well. But 
in many instances release from suffering can be found only in death. To be sure, 
we are all hopeful. But relatives and friends should exercise care about sending 
sick persons far from home. It is bad enough when they are sent away with 
means; but in any stage of disease hope is cut away when the afflicted come penni- 
less among strangers. 

We can think of nothing sadder or more terrible than the situation of these 
persons, whether young or old, men or women. Death is sure to follow and must 
then be met under the most distressing circumstances. The awful crisis is made a 
little endurable when the departing soul is sustained by the arms of those who love 
us. The home and all its sacred associations, the hand of a friend to wipe the 
death dew from the brow, are things worth more than worlds in our last agony. 
But alone in a public almshouse, with no sympathetic eye to cheer us as we take 
the final step into eternity, the horrors of death are tenfold multiplied. Broadcast 
over the land the warning should be sent, that these poor sufferers may not have to 
meet the last earthly terrors in such awful circumstances. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 95 

The California Farmer 



THE country will heartily sympathize with the President's lively interest in the 
welfare of the American farmer. It may be a truism that Mr. Roosevelt 
indulges in when he descants on the importance of the farming interest as 
the basis on which all prosperity in all industries must rest. But it is a kind of 
truism that, like the Ten Commandments, cannot be too often impressed on our 
minds. 

As the President says, the lot of the American farmer is far better than that 
of the agrarian class in any other country. It has always been so, and is conspic- 
uously so at the present time. Twelve years ago the farms of the country were 
nearly all heavily mortgaged, and the fences and outbuildings were generally dilapi- 
dated. The mortgages are wiped out, the fences are in repair, and the houses of 
the farmers and the outbuildings are in a better style than ever known before. 
Pianos are no rare things in the homes of farmers. They and their families dress 
in broadcloth and silks, ride in handsome carriages and in automobiles to church on 
Sunday, and to the play on week-day evenings. They own bank stocks, run their 
own grain elevators and have fat bank accounts. 

Still there is always a height above the highest height, as well as a depth 
below the lowest depth. Hand in hand with the prosperity of the farmers has 
gone that of all of us. Enrich the farmers still more and we shall all climb the 
golden stairs in their good company. 

We hope Mr. Roosevelt will send out his commission at once to inquire into 
the welfare of the farmers. We hope this commission will come to California. 
We would like to show them the happy lot of the farmers in Riverside, Pomona, 
Redlands, San Bernardino, through the valley along by Monrovia, Azusa, Glen- 
dora, Covina and away to Beaumont; in the fat plains by Anaheim and Santa Ana; 
up in the bean and beet fields in Ventura and Santa Barbara and down by Santa 
Monica; in the groves at Rivera, Whittier and Fullerton, and through all Southern 
California. Then they should go to Fresno, where 1 50,000,000 pounds of raisins 
are packed, and to San Jose, where 150,000,000 pounds of prunes are cured, up 
in the Sacramento Valley, where cherries, peaches and pears abound. There are 
some very fine homes occupied by farmers all through this State. Many farmers 
have good balances to their credit at the banks. The ladies of the households can 
make a piano speak entertainingly, while the girls from Stanford and Berkeley can 
talk art and science with the learned men from Washington. 

If Mr. Roosevelt will get his commissioners on the road and head them this 
way, we will send them home next spring well qualified to appear before the Ways 
and Means Committee when that body gets to work to make the revision of the 
tariff to be undertaken next March. The commission is likely to learn what the 
farmers regard as the fountain-head of their prosperity, and to give Congress the 
keynote to be sounded in tariff revision. And the name of Nelson Dingley, Jr., 
and William McKinley are likely to become more beloved than ever. 




K o 



ON CALIFORNIA. 97 

To Live Long and See Good Days 



THERE are few human beings who do not wish to hve long, and the other 
part of the aspiration is universal. When we reach the psalmist's limit 
there are few of us to "dumb forgetfulness a prey" who can "leave the 
warm precincts of the smiling day" and not "cast a longing, lingering look behind." 
Referring again to the Hebrew psalmist, he gives us the moral prescription for 
reaching longevity and living happily while we are in "this vale of tears." His 
way is "to keep the heart from evil and the lips from speaking guile." 

But there is a physical part of our nature as well as a moral, and although 
"mind" may triumph over "matter," yet benignant skies and an atmosphere filled 
with the ozone of health will help materially in cooperation with the moral part of 
the recipe. Southern California can furnish this aid to longevity and happiness of 
existence beyond the ability of any other portion of the globe, as we here all know. 

Here is a little missionary tract in the interest of long Hfe and happiness culled 
from the death list in The Times for a single week. The week coming to a close 
on Saturday, January 25, furnished a daily analysis of the deaths in this city of 
something like 275,000 souls. The number of deaths on one day was thirteen, 
and of these one of the deceased was aged 77, another 74, a third 83, a fourth 
81, a fifth 71, and a sixth 79. Nearly one-half of all the deaths in the city upon 
that day were over the threescore years and ten set us so long as the limit to human 
age and two of them surpassed the fourscore years, when we are told that "our 
days then are labor and sorrow." Of the remaining seven, three were around 60 
years of age, perhaps a year short or a year over. This gives nine out of the 
thirteen who had reached threescore years. 

The next day there were twelve death notices in the paper. One of these 
was 83, a second 73, and a third 83. Of the remaining nine, two were hovering 
about the threescore point. 

The third day of the week recorded fourteen deaths. One was set at 85, 
one at 80, a third at 71, a fourth at 75, a fifth at 82, a sixth 79, a seventh 
at 85, and an eighth at 74. In this list we have eight out of fourteen who were 
past the threescore and ten, and three of these fourscore years and upward. 

Taking the fourth day of the series, we have thirteen deaths, one at 70, one 
at 84, and another at 82, while two were near or past the threescore limit. On 
this day as on others, of the remainder, several ages were not stated. 

On the fifth day of the series we find twenty deaths, one at 76, one at 82, 
and two at over 60. This day furnishes the fewest patriarchs in the list. 

The sixth makes amends, with only seven deaths, one at 82, and one at 72, 
and two at about threescore years. 

Then comes the seventh day, again with seven deaths, one at 73, one at 82, 
and one at 74, and a fourth at exactly 60. 

The summary shows for the seven days the deaths of eighty-six people, of 
whom twenty-seven had reached threescore years and ten, or passed it, only one 
being at that exact point, while thirteen of these were 80 or upward, again only 
one being at the exact fourscore year point. In addition we have at least nine who 
were either about 60 or a little past that age. Out of the eighty-six, then, we have 
thirty-six persons who had lived to be 60 years old and upward, one reaching the 
extreme age of 85, while several were short of that only a year or two. 



98 



BURTON'S BOOK. 




^MmmMMMMMM ill I 




A. F. Rosenheim Architect. C. Leonardt, Builder. 

HAMBURGER BUILDING, BROADWAY, HILL AND EIGHTH STREETS, LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA. 

That record is probably unmatchable in any city of the size of Los Angeles 
inside or outside of the United States. The figures are the more remarkable when 
we realize that this city is sought by thousands of persons of advanced age who 
come here in order to live long and to see good days in spite of their advanced 
years — blessings which they could not expect to enjoy in climates less favorable to 
human life. The aggregate death rate for the week is small, and it is important 
to remember that not only the aged flock here to see good days, but those afflicted 
with various diseases who know their term of life has but a span remaining and 
who come here in hopes of suffering less than would be the case in climates rigorous, 
either from excessive cold or excessive heat, or from sudden changes and every 
element that makes it difficult for the weak to survive or live in comfort. 




MISSION CORRIDOR. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 99 



Dickens's West and Roosevelt's West 



IT IS sixty-five years since Charles Dickens visited the United States. This 
was in 1842, and in 1844 he pubhshed "American Notes," in which were 
contained portions of what was afterward developed into "Martin Chuzzle- 
wit." Dickens's journey from New York to St. Louis throws some light, although 
highly colored, upon the conditions of society in what was then the western frontier 
of the United States. 

When Dickens visited the country St. Louis was the principal city in the Val- 
ley of the Mississippi, and, indeed, it might be said to have been the principal one 
in the United States, with the exception of a few seaports on the Atlantic Coast. 

Dickens's St. Louis was a mere trading post. The business interests of the 
settlement and the condition of society were somewhat analogous to those of Chey- 
enne or Julesberg some twenty years later, when the Union Pacific Railroad was 
being pushed westward from the Missouri River toward the Pacific Coast. 

There was scarcely a trading post in 1 842 between St. Louis and St. Paul. 
There was no settlement of any importance south of St. Louis until New Orleans 
was reached. West of the Mississippi River, the whole continent was practically 
a wilderness, little known and less thought of. The larger portions of. it on maps 
of the United States long ulterior to this date were marked as "The Great Amer- 
ican Desert." Dickens probably heard nothing of Chicago on his journey west- 
ward. It was nothing more than a little hamlet in the swamps at the head of Lake 
Michigan, which the Indians knew as "Skunk's Nest," from which the name Chi- 
cago is derived. 

Such was the Valley of the Great Lakes and rivers in the days of Charles 
Dickens, two generations ago. This great fertile basin we have called "Roosevelt's 
West," in view of the President's trip down the Father of Waters, with St. Louis 
in the center of the stretches of the river which he has covered in his journey in the 
interest of the great waterway. 

It needs but the bare calling of attention to this subject to bring to mind a 
picture of the West of today to hang by the side of Charles Dickens's ancient mas- 
terpiece. 

St. Louis, the leading trading post in the great basin at that lime, is today 
secondary to her rival, then just born, and scarcely known outside of the immediate 
vicinity of Chicago. St. Paul (in Dickens's day, a trading post of less importance 
by far than St. Louis,) is today an immense city, full of wealth, industries, intel- 
lectual and social cultivation, and everything that marks a very high degree of civil- 
ization. Of Minneapolis, Dickens never heard. Only a few miles above St. Paul 
on the river, it outclasses its rival in wealth, industries and population. Between 
these twin cities and St. Louis the river is dotted every mile with towns and villages, 
some of them cities of great importance. Below St. Louis a similar development 
has taken place, with Memphis and other great cities lining the river all the way 
down to New Orleans, which, a village in Dickens's day, has become a great com- 
mercial city in ours. 

Dickens's journey was made in stage coaches, slow of movement and dangerous 
to patronize. The rivers were unbridged. The roads were the merest makeshifts. 
The whole great stretch of country, I 200 miles in extent, between the Atlantic sea 




HOME OF G. W. WATTLES, NEAR HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA. 




Myron Hunt & Elmer Gray, Architects 
HOME OF G. W. WATTLES, NEAR HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 



101 



border and the great stream which cuts the continent in two, is in our time a gridiron 
of railroads, whose passenger trains outclass in sumptuousness and comfort those of 
any other country in the world, and whose speed leaves incomparably far behind 
the achievements of any other railroads of the world. The wilderness which 
Dickens traversed in his slow progress across half the continent is today one of the 
most populous, most highly cultivated and wealthiest districts upon the face of the 
earth. 

When the writer of "Martin Chuzzlewit" was penning his very exaggerated 
word pictures of American society and character, the Mississippi River was to the 
world the utmost boundary of the United States. Beyond was nowhere. A day 
or two ago the President could very truly say, in his speech at Cairo, that here is 
the heart of the United States. The country which stretches west of St. Louis, 
St. Paul and New Orleans is better known today than the State of New York as 
a whole was in 1 842. There is more population west of the river in Roosevelt's 
day than there was in the whole country in Dickens's day. To compare the wealth 
of the two periods is beyond the power of human imagination. The distance is 
too great to span by the human mind. By the census of 1 840 the population of 
the United States barely exceeded I 7,000,000. Compared with Dickens's United 
States, what a leap to Roosevelt's, with its 90,000,000 souls. "The Great Amer- 
ican Desert" is now one of the most productive regions, all things considered, in the 
world. The stock ranges of the great Rocky Mountains are the reliance of half 
the world for meat products. In the center of this so-called desert. Salt Lake is 
one of the most picturesque and progressive cities in America. The mineral wealth 
of the basin, unknown in Dickens's time, lying between the Rocky Mountain range 
and that of the Sierra Nevada, is pouring into the world streams of the precious 
and of the useful metals today in a volume never dreamed of in other days. 

It needs no more than these few hints for our readers to paint for themselves 
a picture which shall contrast the West, and, indeed, the whole of the United 
States, of the days of Charles Dickens with what exists in the days of Theodore 
Roosevelt. The contrast will be impressive beyond anything human history has 
heretofore afforded. 




PERGOLA, HOME OF GILBERT B. PERKINS, SAN GABRIEL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA. 



102 



BURTON'S BOOK. 



The Call of the Heights 



Now in the days of sun and cloud, and the nights that are bright with won- 
drous moons and thick with cluttering stars, comes the call of the heights. 
It is the mountain and hill that call us to look up into the mystic dwelling 
place of God and down upon the beauty of His footstool green with grasses and 
enchanting with the pathways of the flowers. 

The exaltation that takes possession of the soul from the heights is so certain 
that it seems strange so many of us do not more frequently seek it. To lift the 
eyes unto the hills is one thing, but to look down from the hills is another thing, 
and one that is infinitely more thrilling. It is not to be wondered at that moun- 
taineers have ever been the strongest and best men and women. It is the heights 
that make them so. 

Fair and lovely as are the valleys of our California of the South, especially 
in their emerald robes of spring, we still miss the best of their beauty unless we 
view them from the lofty summits of the hills and mountains. How wonderful are 
those vales of magic as they stretch away to the sea, shimmering in the sun, swept 
by the misty kisses of the soft, singing rains, splashed with the gold of poppies and 
orange groves and gleaming with red and yellow where cluster the gardens of won- 
der among the homes of peace! 

And what a treat a man gives his heart and soul who lingers upon the heights 
after the day of cloud and sun has passed and night falls to wrap the world in her 
silvery robe of moonshine bejeweled with the stars. In the Land of Heart's Desire 
God brings earth and heaven very closely together, and from the heights it seems 
that one can almost reach the moon of daffodils as it rises in splendor up from the 
other side of the world. There is many a trail leading from the uplands out of 
the valleys of San Gabriel and San Fernando that brings the feet that love to 
wander into the very realm of the stars. And once there, how the soul quickens, 
what lofty aspirations seize upon the heart. 

Go thou to the heights, then, O brother! Leave behind the smoke of the 
busy town and drive away its ceaseless roar of restless wheels and grinding traffic. 
Get close to the God of things and give the soul free rein to soar above its fettering 
chains out upon the Infinite with its exaltation and its Hope. 




SPANISH MISSION RUIN. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 103 

The Great San Joaquin Valley 



THE great valley lying, broadly speaking, between Sacramento and Bakers- 
field, the Coast Range of mountains on the west and the Sierras on the 
east, has been pretty well known to the writer for a period of over forty 
years. The old stage lines that were the only means of communication between 
the few towns lying in the midst of broad stretches of mesa were used by him 
before the railroad stretched itself through the center of the valley, along about 
1873 to 1878. 

Until about 1870 this great valley was used for scarcely any purpose except 
grazing. The chief industry was breeding sheep, lesser cattle and horses ; and 
down around Visalia, a little later, the breeding of swine was taken up. As one 
rode from Fresno toward Visalia on the old Concord coach there were frequently 
met droves of pigs en route to San Francisco to be butchered and disposed of 
there as fresh pork. When Visalia was reached and breakfast was ordered, the 
usual ration was ham and eggs. Invariably the ham came from Chicago. 

The first wheat-raising in the valley on anything but a small scale was 
begun by the late Isaac Friedlander of San Francisco in the plain about Merced. 
It was an experiment with this pioneer in wheat-growing in the San Joaquin 
Valley, but it required but few harvests to demonstrate the fitness of the soil for 
this purpose. In less than ten years the county of Tulare, then somewhat larger 
than it is at present, shipped to San Francisco as the result of a single harvest 
14,000 carloads of wheat. The cars were "flats" and they were heaped with 
as many sacks of wheat as they could carry. 

Grain-raising succeeded live-stock breeding until after 1 880. The first 
attempts at more intense cultivation began about Fresno in the planting of vines. 
It was soon found that this portion of the valley was as suitable for raisin culture 
as any part of old Spain. From that time on the industry increased rapidly until 
the San Joaquin Valley today practically furnishes the North American continent 
with raisins. The next important new industry was fig culture, and now a large 
percentage of the figs used in the United States comes also from that section of 
the country. 

Farther up toward San Francisco and around Stockton more diversified 
farming was begun in early years, and this varied industry has grown as the years 
have passed. 

At the present time the San Joaquin Valley has three lines of railroad 
through nearly its whole extent, with branches running in various directions. The 
Southern Pacific operates two branches from Fresno to San Francisco, and the 
Santa Fe Railroad has one line. In the southern part of the valley around 
Porterville and Exeter has been developed one of the finest orange districts in 
the State of California. The oranges ripen earlier than down in the southern 
part of the State, which is erroneously considered to be very hot. The ocean 
breezes moderate the climate about Los Angeles and all through Southern Cali- 
fornia so materially that in the hotter localities above described the oranges ripen 
a couple of months earlier. 




Oy>XyXJJXDKJVCj yC 



ON CALIFORNIA. 105 

Passing from Porterville and that region westwardly across the valley, we 
encounter Corcoran, a new town near what was once Tulare Lake, a large body 
of water in the early days but now a dry sink excepting after excessive rains. 
The change has been wrought by taking out the water from Kings River and 
other streams that come down from the Sierras, for irrigation purposes, up on 
the higher levels of the valley. At Corcoran a great sugar factory has been 
established, one of the largest in the State. Around this same center the cultiva- 
tion of asparagus has been begun with much success. 

The transition from the great plains overrun by bands of sheep and cattle, 
producing about one sheep to the acre or a steer to two or three acres (the bands 
of live stock being handled by about two herders to the thousand acres) to 
intensive farming in the orchards about Porterville, the raisin vineyards about 
Fresno, the orchards of figs and very many other fruits, and the growth of 
sugar beets and asparagus around Corcoran, is only conceivable by those who 
have known the valley as it was and as it is. 

The population of California is growing at an amazing rate. With this 
has come a wonderful development of the resources of the State. This develop- 
ment is comparatively new in the great valley we are writing about. It is in a 
more rapid ratio these current years, going back twenty-four to thirty months and 
coming down to the present time, than any other part of the State. Two years 
and a half ago large tracts of land were obtainable there at $10 or $15 an acre, 
and these being subdivided were put on the market at $20 to $30 in parcels of 
five to twenty acres. ■ The cheap lands are a thing of the past. The great 
ranches are all either subdivided and settled or in process of being so. Twenty 
years ago land around Porterville could have been bought for $50 an acre, 
which in a raw condition today, with water rights, is held cheap at $500 and 
upward, and in bearing orange groves is on the basis of revenue cheap at any- 
where from $1000 to $2000 an acre according to the condition of the grove. 
Small patches of good soil devoted to the cultivation of sugar beets, with proper 
care will pay a revenue of $60 an acre a year, practically all net to the culti- 
vator. There are still moderately low priced lands in the valley, but they are 
being fast taken up. 

In the old days when the Concord coach swung through the valley with 
four good stocky horses in front of it, reeling off six miles an hour, there were 
half a dozen small towns in the whole district. Now there are half a hundred 
good-sized towns in the valley, Fresno and Bakersfield being very respectable 
cities. 

We have been speaking of the products of the surface soil in the San Joaquin 
Valley; the grass which fed the sheep and cattle, the crops of grapes which are 
converted into raisins, the luscious oranges so popular in the East, and the beets 
which are converted into sugar. Around Bakersfield has been developed one of 
the greatest oil fields of the whole world. West of Fresno in the Coalinga 
country is another great oil field, and it is probable that these underground riches 
will be found to extend all the way along the western side of the valley. Millions 
of barrels of oil yearly are poured out from this subterranean treasury of the 
great San Joaquin, and this outpour will continue for a hundred years, probably 
for several hundred years. 




IN THE ITALIAN GARDENS OF G. W. WATTLES, HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA. 




Myron Hunt & Elmer Gray, Architects 



ON CALIFORNIA. 107 



Promise of the Foothills 



4( ^T^HERE springtime first unfolds her robes and there she longest tarries." 
I The sweet singer who so dearly loved nature, Robert Burns, wrote 

the quoted words about "the banks and braes and streams around the 
castle of Montgomery." 

Oh, that there were a Burns to sing the praises of a stretch of country where 
spring is almost perpetual, and where nature puts on robes in midsummer different 
from her spring garb, then changes again in autumn to garments more splendid than 
"Solomon in all his glory" dreamed of — where, even when Winter blows his coldest 
in this winterless land, still nature is clothed in loveliness which entrances every eye 
which rests upon the scene! 

Burns's springtime put in an appearance about June 1 , and by September 1 
the banks and braes around the castle of Montgomery were desolate indeed, swept 
by harsh winds laden with rain, that ran at times to sleet. Could so gifted a singer 
but stand on some projecting brow of the mountain range, which, like a protecting 
arm, hugs the valley of Southern California from the Malibu range of hills above 
Santa Monica all the way to Beaumont, in San Gorgonio Pass, to be met there by 
the twin arm which is thrown around the other side of the valley down to San 
Diego, what a song would he pour forth out of a heart afire with joy kindled by 
the prospect that lies below. 

It is of the foothills of Southern California that I am writing. Lovely natural 
scenery always awakens poetic fervor. Gifted singers pour out melodies over the 
islands where "spicy breezes" blow soft. They tell of lands "where every prospect 
pleases." "Knowest thou the land of the citron and myrtle?" How memories 
of childhood spent around lovely scenes come up from the full heart of mature 
years. Many have sung of "Greece, whose old poetic mountains inspiration breathe 
around." The cry of dwellers in cold Northern Europe for 2000 years has been 
"beyond the Alps lies Italy." 

None of these lands matches our foothill country lying like a gem of charm- 
ing colors in the setting of the mountain heights for nearly 200 miles above the fer- 
tile valleys of Southern California. Not tropical Ceylon, whose beauties charmed 
Heber; not Greece, which cast such a powerful spell over Byron; not Italy, which 
drew from Keats and Rogers such glowing words of praise— no, not all these lands, 
with all their varied loveliness, surpass our own flower-decked, pine-studded, moun- 
tain-embraced foothills, as they lie bathed in unflecked noontide sunbeams, in the 
rosy light of early morning, or in the purple shades of closing day. Whether the 
shadows of a winter rain settle over them, or fleecy clouds chase one another in a 
long procession along the sky, casting their shadows on the landscape below, or the 
white light from a cloudless sky falls along the ridges of these hills, they are al- 
ways beautiful. Always the same changeless features, but always changing in the 



108 BURTON'S BOOK. 

smile that nature spreads over them in their beauty, these foothills always attract, 
always satisfy, never pall upon the taste, never seem stale. Always familiar, they 
are always new. 

When "springtime first unfolds her robes" over these hills, they glow with 
as bright an emerald as clothed the scenes along Burns's beloved Dee. A little 
later, while still the winter, in all its harshness, holds other lands in a grip of ice, 
the poppy sets these hills aflame with a myriad cups of living fire. The lily (which 
the Spanish people name after the butterfly) spreads its variegated wings along the 
little valleys that lie between the ridges. Another lily, which the children call the 
grass flower, rises on a slender stem of vivid green and then bursts into a tiny ball 
of blue, which takes its color from the sky itself. A book would fail to tell of 
all the varied flowers that spring here from these hillsides and grow in the valleys. 
The angels which paint the skies and spot in the stars as diamond eyes of night, 
who know all the colors which ray from the precious stones that wall-in heaven, 
and the flame of its golden floors, must have spilled their dyes here over these foot- 
hill landscapes of this land of the sun. 

Summer comes when spring goes, but the beauties of the foothills only change. 
They never go. The slopes are no longer like a flame with the poppy's cup, but 
other blooms as red as blood, as delicate white as lace, purple as larkspur, and blue 
as a companion flower, come to take the poppy's place. The browns on the ledges 
farther up are as rich as the emerald of the sward weeks before. The Spanish 
bayonet shoots up his long shaft of spotless white. The autumn comes and fades 
into what we call winter, and goldenrod makes the caiions glow like a mint, deeper 
of hue than the mustard patches were in April, but quite as striking in their col- 
oring. 

No pent-up Utica, these ridges of the foothills. No box-hke house is his who 
lives upon these glorious heights. Far out, seaward and skyward, the view ranges. 




ALPINE TAVERN, MT. LOWE, CALIFORNIA 



ON CALIFORNIA. 109 

All between He the rich valleys of Southern California. Here a stream threads its 
way to its eternal home in the deep, its banks fringed with willows and alders. 
Green alfalfa fields, with their flowers purple as a king's garment, lie along the 
banks, and peaceful flocks revel in sunshine, in soft airs and in plenty. Nearer to 
the beholder's feet stretch the orange groves, which constitute so large a part of the 
wealth of the country, and among these groves of green and gold are towns and 
cities, as well as the homes of the orchardists. Church spires rise above the trees, 
and schoolhouses here and there crown sightly knolls. Far across the valley wher- 
ever one stands, circles the other arm of the mountain, with its ragged sides climbing 
toward the sky and thrusting snow-capped peaks into the clouds. On the other 
side the plain slopes off to the sea, which pours its turquoise bath all around the land. 

That is what I would like to see some Burns or Byron, Keats or Whittier 
come and sing in fitting phrase. We, few of us, seem to see what lies here in all 
this long stretch of foothill country. Here and there some few who have an eye 
for what is most beautiful in nature are seizing upon some proud eminence along 
these slopes, and with a few miles of well-made roads, some winding paths, a bunga- 
low and a little stream of crystal mountain water, are making homes impossible to 
match outside of Southern California. The rough portions of these caiions and 
knolls are being planted with various varieties of the eucalyptus. Nature has done 
so much that art has little to do. 

There is not only beauty here, but health. The air is the purest, the balmiest 
that blows out of the heavens. And amid the beauty and in these salubrious airs 
peace reigns undisturbed day and night. What a place for the disciple of the 
simple life! There is not a king's palace in all the earth whose site is to be com- 
pared with a thousand spots in this amphitheater, which looks down upon the valley, 
with its cities, towns and hamlets, its mountain ranges on one side, and the sea on 
the other. How the sunlight glows upon the heights! How peacefully it sleeps 
in the deep, cool dells and canons! How the shadows creep all day long around 
the peaks, or lie still in the gorge that cuts the chain to the heart! How near 
the stars seem to be, almost as if you could touch them! How melodious the lay 
of the mocking bird and the lark! How soft the murmur of the sleepy breeze or 
the plash of the rippling waters, as they leap over a rock-bound rim into a basin of 
rock below! 

When the poet of the future does come he will echo Tom Moore's thought 
as he looked on the famed Vale of Avoca: 

"And I thought that if peace could be found in the world. 
The heart that was humble might hope for it here." 

Watch the future of our foothill hamlets! You will see a wondrous develop- 
ment. See them grow in wealth, beauty and population. See farms and orchards 
multiply, villas and castles spring up! 



BURTON'S BOOK. 



Westward, Ho! 



WE all know Charles Kingley's beautiful story, "Amias Leigh." From the 
days of the Mayflower, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Capt. John Smith, 
"Westward, Ho!" has been the cry of the most intelligent, energetic, and 
enterprising specimens of the human race of all nations. "Westward the Star of 
Empire takes its way" was the prophecy of that great statesman-ecclesiastic. Bishop 
Berkeley, who saw American civilization as it lay a babe in its cradle. "Go west, 
young man, and grow up with the country," said the great newspaper genius, Hor- 
ace Greeley, some fifty years ago. 

Since the days of "Amias Leigh," Bishop Berkeley, down to Horace Gree- 
ley, and on to this morning, "Westward, Ho!" has led millions of people to fame 
and fortune. Through all these years the Star of Empire has been traveling west- 
ward in its course, and still the wise young men of all lands have their faces turned 
westward to grow up with a country which becomes more absolutely full of promise 
and fulfillment the farther west one goes. 

These present days the people of Los Angeles are doing all that in them lies 
to show due honor to a couple of hundred of the leading men of the Ultima Thule 
of the Furthest West. They, in their own person or in that of their progenitors, 
represent the valiant, energetic, progressive, enterprising souls whose ears of keen 
intelligence heard the cry of "Amias Leigh," believed in the prophecy of Bishop 
Berkeley, and took the advice of Horace Greeley. They came west, as far west 
as the West goes, and there grew up with the country, some of them as far up as 
there is room to grow. 

And a right fitting thing it is that these courageous business men of the great 
Northwest should come to Los Angeles to complete their education, here among 
us of the great Southwest. While Oregon was saying, "She Flies With Her Own 
Wings," but still kept crawling along at a snail's pace of development, and while 
up in Washington their motto was "Alkai," "Bye and Bye," down here in Los 
Angeles it has always been an eternal NOW. With wide-open arms and with 
the heartiest welcome, the City of the Angels receives these Beavers and also their 
friends, the Evergreens. This is not Missouri by two thousand miles, but we will 
"SHOW THEM." The heartiness of the welcome with which we receive our 
friends from the Far North is intensified by the knowledge that they have joined 
in earnest the great army who have been pulling as well as shouting for Pacific 
Coast development for years past. 

The adventurous spirits who heard the cry, "Westward, Ho!" for the last 
three hundred years, have crowded the Atlantic seaboard from the magnificent 
woods of Maine to the Everglades of Florida with a present population of 30,000,- 
000 souls. West of the Rocky Mountains there are scarcely 3,000,000 human 
beings. At the East every opening for the investment of capital and every opening 
for the employment of human talents of any high order is filled as soon as the gate 



ON CALIFORNIA. 1 1 1 

turns on its hinges by the younger sons of the president or other official of some 
great railroad system or other muIti-milHonaire enterprise. Throughout the East 
there is no longer any "OPEN DOOR" for any young man who has not a "pull," 
and a strong one, too. But the great West teems and overflows with opportunities 
for the investment of money and of intellectual talents to such a degree that all the 
superfluous stock or either money or talent in the United States would not half meet 
the demand. 

The great Southwest and the great Northwest, stretching from the Straits of 
Juan de'Fuca to Tia Juana, offers inducements to thousands, to millions, of men 
and women, provided only they have either capital to invest in something or brains 
to achieve something. There are broad farms to cultivate, there are orchards to 
develop, there are mines to open, there are quarries to exploit, there are railroads to 
build, there are towns to found, there are steamboat lines to organize, there are 
transoceanic steamship lines to put in motion, there are great commercial enterprises 
to build up, to such an amazing number that twenty years of the hardest work we 
can put in at our best will merely touch the outer edges of these multitudinous and 
magnificent opportunities for laying the foundations of millionaire fortunes in the 
time to come, and of achieving undying fame. This great West, both South and 
North, is crying in thunder tones to those who have capital, to those who have 
brains: "Westward, Ho!" "Westward the Star of Empire still takes its way," 
"Come west, young men, and grow up with our country." 

Come on, ye tall Evergreens from Puget Sound! Come, ye tireless Beavers 
from the valley of the Willamette! Come, ye Pines from the sides of Shasta, and 
ye merchant princes from San Francisco, and let us all join together! Let it be 
"a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together" for all the interests of all parts 
of the Pacific Coast. Let there be no selfishness in this work for the upbuilding 
of the Pacific States. It is not so much for ourselves we are working as it is for 
those to whom we call across the Rocky Mountains and across the floods of the 
Missouri and the Mississippi, "Westward, Ho!" "Come west, young men, and 
grow up with this great, growing country." 

It is for our country we are working. It is not so much for Seattle, for Port- 
land, for San Francisco, or for Los Angeles. These cities are all doing exceed- 
ingly well, thank you, as they are. But let us think of the East, overcrowded with 
money and with talent, where a selfish nepotism thrusts a younger son into every 
good avenue where a living may be gained and leaves the poor young man of reso- 
lute heart and great capacity out in the cold. Let us get them out here. Let 
them come in tens, in hundreds, in thousands, in millions. There is a home out 
here for all of them. There are riches to be dug from the mines and from the 
plains. There is fame to achieve in public enterprises and in public service for men 
of capacity, for men of integrity, for men who can do something and who will do 
something. Let us raise the cry, let it be loud and long: 

"Westward the Star of Empire! Come west, young men! Westward, Ho!" 
to all of you who want an opportunity to do something and to be something. 
Here is the place in the great Southwest, in the great Northwest, in all the great 
West, where you can find an opportunity ready to your hand. We are only 
3,000,000 now. There is room here for 30.000,000. Where each one of us 
is now finding an opportunity to do something and be something, there is plenty of 
room for ten more of you to come and join us. 



n!Cj!^T:»cr*«cj»^- 



' ^'C?rC3»iC3nE-ini'^ 




HOME OF LYMAN J. GAGE, POINT LOMA, CALIFORNIA. 




A PIECE OF THE MT. LOWE TRAIL. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 



13 



Did Not See the Flowers, Anyway 



THE visiting Shriners were amazed at the wealth of flowers displayed in the 
parade on Friday. They had never before seen a city all covered with 
lovely bloom from "turret to foundation stone," its blossoms overflowing 
into all the streets, and spread over horses, vehicles and fire- engines, and tossed to 
visitors in a million bouquets. 

But the visitors did not see the flowers of California. They only caught a 
glimpse of a few specimens. To see what flower-decked California really is they 
should seek the flowers in their "native lair," or to be exact, in their natural habitat. 
Go out into the mountains and out over the desert. The desert for flowers? That 
is the place. Such a desert never was dreamed of elsewhere as one sees in Ante- 
lope Valley and parts of Death Valley these May days. Visit these broad plains 
where the yuccas stand, not like sentinels, but like soldiers in serried ranks, battalion 
after battalion, rank on rank, corps behind corps, and in solid squares miles long 
on each side, all lifting their long shafts of spotless white into the glorious sun to 
whose kiss they owe their existence ! Go then to where the poppy flaunts his golden 
sheen, where his dainty cup is lost to sight, its perfect symmetry mingled in the pro- 
fuse mass of blossoms, a hundred to every square yard of space, sweepmg like living 
fire down one long hillside into the valley, leaping the valley in tongues of vivid 
flame, and flashing in broad stretches up the opposite hillside far as the eye can see. 
A city full of flowers? There are enough of these yucca pillars of white light, 
and of these golden-poppy carpets to fill to their borders some of the patches of 
territory they call States out there by the Atlantic. 

And there are cultivated places where the mustard has broken away from the 
narrow limits of civilization and run wild again in riotous profusion that makes the 
landscape look as if the golden floors of Heaven had melted and been poured over 
the earth. When this is all told, go into the mountains and see the wild lilac, 
spirea, roses and a thousand other varieties of bloom that proclaim aloud their 




STAGE ROAD, CENTRAL CALIFORNIA. 



114 



BURTON'S BOOK. 




GIANT BREAKERS AT SAN PEDRO, CALIFORNIA. 

rivalry with the yucca and the poppy. And all over Death Valley tiny blossoms 
hugging close to the hot sand, but dyed in hues that defy nature's rainbow or man's 
artificial prism to match. 

And yet you have not seen the wondrous, waxy leaves of the madrofio, with 
his polished, painted stem, or the arbutus berries that light up the hilltop, and the 
sides of the arroyos late in the year. 

The story must stop midway. There is no end to it. 



Tourist Tooting 



JUST after the election excitement is over, the Counties Committee of Califor- 
nia will assemble here in Los Angeles. The theme to be discussed is juicy 
and full of meaning. It is "Tourists in California." 

The committee has chosen the right thesis and the right place for discussing 
it. Southern California is the creation of tourists, and Los Angeles is the beau- 
tiful capstone of the grand edifice. 

Not that the State is simply what the "transients" have made it. But the 
tourists of the past are the old settlers of today. Away back fifty years ago no 
one came to California to stay. To find "pay gravel," "pan out your pile" and 
go back to the "States" — that was the talk of all who "came the plains across, the 
Horn around," or who later "crossed the Isthmus." On the steamers that bore 
1000 persons, not one of them looked upon California as a home. On the streets 
of San Francisco the talk was all of the time when one could go back to the old 
home city or village or farmhouse and "astonish the natives" with stories of the 
wonderful land of gold and with the wealth carried back. Men in business were 
here only until they were worth enough to go back and open up a business "at 
home" on a large scale, or retire independent of further effort for life. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 115 

Homesickness was an epidemic among these early tourists. San Francisco, 
with its low, squalid buildings, high winds and swirling dust, was not inviting. 
"Society was not what it was back home." The country in summer burned brown 
and its roads, hub-deep in dust, were not inviting. 

All were "pilgrims and sojourners" intent on going "back home" as soon as 
possible. 

But the long sunny days, the purple mountains, the cloudless skies, cool nights, 
the swish of the surf on the white sands, the free and easy life, the democracy of 
the people, the climate, landscape and conditions of life were all working in quiet 
harmony on the heart, soul and pulses of the tourists. Little by little the charm 
of the New England village, or of the big, bustling city, waned; and as it waned 
the charm of the brown plains and purple hills, of the gentle breezes and sunny 
skies, sank deeper and deeper into the soul. The summer trade winds from the 
northwest died in a few sobs, and the next day trade winds came up from the 
southwest with moisture on their broad wings. The skies became somber. Great 
scurrying clouds rushed along, and when night fell the rain came down, pattering 
on the roof or sweeping in great swirls past the windows. After twenty-four hours 
the sun broke out again in a sky as blue as turquoise, and the airs were warm and 
gentle. Sun and air kissed and fondled the trees. Some one had planted a bit 
of rose cutting by the window, or scattered a few flower seeds. Lo, they burst 
the sod and came up fast enough to measure their daily growth ! A vine had been 
stuck in the ground and it broke into leaf and its long tendrils reached after some- 
thing to cling to, and in a few weeks it was to the eaves of the houses. 

And out on the plains and hills, where no human hand scattered a seed or 
turned a sod, the whole landscape bloomed out into a vast expanse of verdure dotted 
with thousands of strange but beautiful flowers. Christmas time came around, and 
all California was a bed of flowers, and of soft, green grass. The woods broke 
into new life. Mocking birds and larks broke into song. 

Home? Why, this was the only home worth having below the blue vault 
of heaven. Spring came and summer followed. The plains were all yellow as 
gold with wild mustard and aflame with poppies. And the glorious woods, with 
their undergrowth, were more beautiful in native wildness than Kew Gardens or 
Les Jardins de Paris. Then they went to the white sands at Santa Cruz or at 
Santa Monica. And the days of rustling breezes and the nights of spicy air, the 
music of the waves and the flash of the moonbeams on the water, were charms irre- 
sistible to every heart with a particle of sentiment. 

So the tourists forgot the old New England home, the old Kentucky home, 
and all the other old homes. The tourist became a settler, the settler an old set- 
tler, and all began sending letters "back East." It had ceased to be "back home." 
It was "back to the States." And the burden of them all was to come to this fair 
land of all dehghts and enjoy life as was never possible in "the States." 

In time came the true tourists, the people who just came out to see California. 
They came and spent a few weeks and then went "back home." But it was 
"home" no longer. The spell of the sun-kissed land of the sunset sea had taken 
possession of their hearts. It was a spell that would not be shaken off. It grew 
and grew, until next year the tourist came again. He brought the family and the 
family cat and the pet dog, all his Lares and Penates. He became a settler, and 
soon was offended if not considered an "old settler." 



116 BURTON'S BOOK. 

So was built up the great State of California by tourists who became settlers 
in spite of themselves, grew to be old settlers and pioneers. So was built up Los 
Angeles, the City Great, the City Beautiful — by tourists who were irresistibly con- 
verted into settlers and could not tear themselves away until they had become set- 
tlers, and would rather stay here and be pioneers than live anywhere else on the 
whole round globe. 

So let the Counties Committee come here and we will show it what the tour- 
ists have done and what they have become. We will show it the influences which 
converted tourists into settlers and settlers into pioneers. Then the members may 
go home, and, if they can, make skies like ours, make the breezes blow as they do 
here, take along a few thousand mocking birds, and start a few hundred patches of 
poppies about ten miles square each and build a range of purple mountains and set 
rolling a few hundred miles of sapphire beaches, bring a river 240 miles to make 
glad the city of God, and cut out 300 miles of fine roads all over God's country. 
When they have done this, they may get a few tourists by good advertising, convert 
them into settlers, start a pioneer society, and grow up into something like Los An- 
geles. 



It is Spring in California 



44^T^HE drops that water the earth" — the first of the new season — have fallen 
I in Southern California. It is springtime here now and will be until about 
the end of May. That is a little long for the spring season, but that is 
because the opening is a little early this year. Never mind the almanac. That is 
an ancient institution made before the "Land of Sunshine" was known and never 
yet reformed to meet conditions here. Besides, all the almanac says is that it is 
the month of October, and that month is more than half-way past. Then your 
mind, educated on eastern ideas, reads in between the lines your old-time experiences 
in the "Land of Ice and Snow" and you get to the misleading conclusion that we 
are on the edge of winter. Look up to the skies from the pages of the calendar. 
Look out on the fields from the recesses of your mind. The skies and the fields 
will tell you it is springtime. 

Last week it was summer, the culmination of the summer when all the crops 
had been gathered in and the fields were crisp and brown, shorn of all the produc- 
tions of the fertile soil. The mercury in the tube ranged from 70 tct 80 degrees. 
There was a hush in the air, a haze over the mountains and plains. This week 
the skies are thick with clouds and the fields are soaked with spring showers. Oh, 
yes, these come in April, back where we were born, and make May flowers. That 
is all changed in this land where summer ends one day and spring begins the next, 
just taking a "hop, skip and a jump" over winter in a moment. 

"The drops that water the earth" have dropped into the eyes of the seeds 
from which the poppy flowers grow, touching them into wakefulness. The moisture 
is gently soaking into the heart of the bulbs from which the butterfly lilies spring 
and softening them so that the tender germ can burst its prison walls, dull with con- 
tact with the earth, and break forth into newness of beauty and life, making the 
landscape gay. This will all take place as it vere tomorrow. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 



17 



Thanksgiving Day is approaching, when the ponds in the lands of our old 
homes will be covered with the first coating of ice and lads will sally forth, radiant 
and glad to be sure, to coast and skate. Christmas and New Year's Day are 
only nine or ten weeks away, and long before they come in those old homes of ours, 
snowflakes will fly, trees will stand bare as telegraph poles, and the cold north winds 
will shriek through the naked branches. The streams will have ceased to sing along 
the hillsides and through the valleys. Winter, clad in furs, will be blowing on his 
numb fingers through the icicles in his long gray beard. 

That will be the way of the seasons in our old homes. Base-burner stoves 
will glow red in hall and living-room. The "backlogs" will glow in the big fire- 
places where woods still exist. The family, the family cat and the house dog 
will all crowd together as near the blaze as possible. 

With us the moist earth of today, fructified by our first showers of the new 
spring, will at once begin to bud, burgeon and bloom. The brown fields of yes- 
terday's consummated summer will become the velvety green of tomorrow's new- 
born spring. With showers and the copious downpours to follow at intervals during 
the ensuing weeks, soon the landscape will be aflame with poinsettias as red as a 
cardinal's hat, with geraniums of many hues, with the ever-blooming roses of our 
sunny land, and the plains and hillsides will look like emerald. There will be 
no skating, no, not even at Christmas and New Year's Day. There will be no 
double windows to the houses, nor false entrances to keep out the snow and wind. 
No "backlogs" will roar in the fireplaces. We shall eat our turkey, our walnuts 
and raisins with windows wide open, sunlight streaming in, soft airs blowing, gar- 
dens gorgeous as peacocks' raiment, mocking birds singing in the trees, and spring- 
time at its full perfection when Christmas bells are ringing and New Year's greetings 
filling all the atmosphere. 




LOW TIDE AT SAN PEDRO, CALIFORNIA. 



BURTON'S BOOK. 



Climate as an Asset 



44 A FTER all," the eastern man may say, who has read and heard so much 
/-% about the manifold and varied attractions of Southern California, "what 
solid advantages have you to offer to induce a man to leave his eastern 
home and cast in his lot with you? I have heard much of your climate and scen- 
ery, but a man cannot very well live on either or both of these." 

The question is a fair one, and we will endeavor, in as few words as possible, 
to answer it, so far as the climate is concerned. We are perfectly aware that the 
subject of Southern California's "glorious climate" has become to a great extent, 
what in vulgar parlance is termed a "chestnut;" yet we shall not be prevented by 
such a consideration from boasting of this jewel of great price, which so many lands 
would give anything to share with us. Let soured and shivering denizens of eastern 
and northwestern snowfields perpetrate their feeble jokes on our climate, to their 
heart's content; that shall not make us ashamed to speak of our greatest heritage. 

Climate is, after all, the most important feature of life. It is the condition 
of the air we breathe. While, from the East, we get reports of snowstorms and 
blizzards, we have here balmy air, blue skies and bright sunshine. Is it not worth 
something to live in- a city where the thermometer has gone below 32 degrees only 
six times during the past 1 years and where a man needs blankets every night in 
summer? A man will give much for his life and he will, therefore — if he is wise — 
be willing to make almost any sacrifice to get to a section of country whose climate 
will prolong life. Such a climate is that of Southern California. 




OFF DEADMAN S ISLAND, AT SAN PEDRO, CALIFORNIA. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 119 

But it may be replied, California is a large State, 700 miles long. It con- 
tains a vast amount of climate. Are you not rather "bulling" the climate market 
in view of the large supply of the article? 

Not so! It must not be supposed that all California is alike — that it is only 
necessary to cross the Sierra Nevadas to find the perfection of climate. Such is far 
from being the case. The area of the State in which perfect climatic conditions 
exist is quite limited, and those who wish to secure a home within the climatic belt 
at a reasonable price should not let any grass grow under their feet. The physical 
configuration of the land causes this belt to be confined to a strip extending from 
Point Concepcion, in Santa Barbara county, to San Diego, about 250 miles, and 
extending back from the coast forty miles — say 1 0,000 square miles, or 6,400,000 
acres. After deducting inaccessible hills, water-courses and other places which 
cannot be cultivated, we hav£ perhaps 5,000,000 acres of arable land carrying 
with it a title, in perpetuity, to a proportionate share of the finest climate in the 
world — say enough to give 500,000 families ten acres apiece. 

The climate, even within this favored region, is, of course, not absolutely per- 
fect—there is none such in the world — but it comes a little nearer perfection than 
any climate that exists elsewhere. It is a climate possessing that rare faculty of 
letting one alone, to pursue one's vocation in peace. One is not reminded of the 
subject of the weather by extreme heat or cold — by frost or snow, and their at- 
tendant discomforts. One can work well during the day, and sleep restfully at 
night. It is only new arrivals who exclaim: "What a beautiful day!" After 
a person has been here a few months it is taken as a matter of course that the day 
should be fine. 

Many people have been saying that this is a remarkably cool and cloudy 
summer, so far, in Los Angeles. Reference to the tables kept at the local weather 
bureau, which, like George Washington, cannot tell a lie, did not altogether bear 
out this supposition until toward the end of July. Here are the figures showing 
the average sunshine, humidity and temperature for May, June and July since a 
record has been kept and similar figures for the months of May, June and July of 
this year: 

Sunshine. Huniidity. Temperature. 

Average May 60 74 63 

May 1905 66 72 61 

Average June 68 73 67 

June 1905 69 77 64 

Average July 76 74 72 

July 1 905 63 79 69 

From this it will be seen that we had 6 per cent, more sunshine in May than 
the average, 1 per cent, more in June, and 1 3 per cent, less in July. The humidity 
in May was 2 per cent, less, in June only 4 per cent. more. The temperature has 
been slightly below the average, but only 2 degs. in May and 3 degs. in June 
and July. 

Some people have also been surmising that the big lake, forty miles long and 
in places quite deep, at Salton, on the Colorado Desert, may be partly responsible 
for the cloudy mornings we have been having. The same suggestions were put 
forth when the lake formed at Salton eleven years ago, but the weather man de- 
clares they are unfounded. Our cool and partly foggy weather at this time of 
year, which is such a delightful contrast to climatic conditions prevailing east of the 



120 



BURTON'S BOOK. 



mountains, is due to a simple meteorological effect. The hot sun that beats down 
on the Colorado and Mojave deserts, where the temperature in the shade — when 
there is any shade — during the summer months, runs up over 1 00 degs. every day, 
causes the heated air to rise, and this, like opening a door to a hot room, lets in 
the cool, moist air from the Pacific Ocean. Also this year there is an atmospheric 
depression over the Colorado Desert What might happen should these deserts 
be largely irrigated and cultivated is a subject for conjecture, but there is no reason 
to doubt that the climate of Southern California, for a distance of twenty or thirty 
miles back from the coast, will continue to be the best all-year-around climate to be 
found on the face of the globe, and consequently, that this section will continue to 
attract from less favored parts of the country in ever-increasing numbers, healthr 
seekers, pleasure-seekers and home-seekers. 



Possibilities Unfathomed 



IT is very far from a semi-millenium since three little open boats under the flag 
of Spain first touched the waters of the western hemisphere and revealed the 

new world to the eyes of Europeans. It is only a little over a century since 
the United States of America sprang, so to speak, like Pallas Athene from the 
brain of Jove, a completely armed addition to the family of nations. It is but 
little over half a century since California became a part of these United States of 
America, and less than a generation since the settlement of the Great Southwest 
began. 

In all the 125 years since the republic was founded, also in the half century 
since California became one of the States of the Union, and during every year of 
the last thirty, a realization of the vast riches of the American continent, of the 
territory of the United States and of this Great Southwest has been more and more 




IRRIGATING DITCH, IMPERIAL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 121 

astonishing to the minds of men. One would suppose that by today we knew pretty 
thoroughly what the undeveloped resources of the Great Southwest might reasonably 
be expected to become. We have not reached the depths of this great ocean of 
wealth with our plummet line yet. 

In a residence of forty years on the Coast the writer thought he knew a little 
about what there is on the Coast, and as most of these years have been spent in 
and around Los Angeles, he naturally had a little conceit that he was pretty well 
acquainted with the Great Southwest. Last week a trip to the Colorado River 
bottoms, below Yuma, made him feel as a tenderfoot who had come in on the last 
train. 

Yuma lies on the map just twelve miles from where the government is putting 
in the great Laguna dam, at the confluence of the Gila and Colorado rivers. It is 
twelve miles from Yuma down the river to the Mexican boundary line on the Ari- 
zona side of the river. At one point, just below Yuma, the international boundary 
line runs up along the river which there takes a westerly trend and from Yuma to 
Mexico is only a few miles. 

Ages ago, when the mountain ranges of Arizona and California towered 
toward the stars, at least twice as high as they do now, rains were very frequent 
and came down in torrential volumes all along these mountain ridges. The Colo- 
rado River in these past ages was a mighty stream, sweeping down debris in tons 
every second of its flow. The Colorado sink was at that time a great inland sea, 
which spread over the country on both sides of where the river now runs. As the 
erosion of winds and storms, landslides and glaciers wore down the mountain ridges 
year by year, the great river carried down a vast amount of silt, erosion from the 
rocks full of phosphates, limes and disintegrated granite, as well as the vegetation 
along its banks; and this was all deposited in what are now the sinks of the Col- 
orado. 

As the mountain tops were worn down, the rains became less frequent and less 
in volume, but the erosion of rocks and river banks, the trees and vegetable mould 
torn from the banks still came down and settled into the bottom of the great inland 
lake. This geological process went on from age to age to our time, leaving the 
Colorado at Yuma a stream about half a mile wide and being at the present time 
about twenty feet deep in the deepest portion. 

It is not necessary to remind Californians that the Spanish missionaries and 
explorers called this river the Colorado because of the reddish color of its waters. 
It is the Colorado up in the Grand Canon in Arizona and down past the Needles. 
But at this time of the year, after passing the mouth of the Gila, instead of the 
red river it becomes the brown river. It actually looks today as if ten per cent, of 
its flow was silt and only ninety per cent, water. 

But the object of this story is to call attention once more, and for perhaps the 
thousandth time, to the riches of the soil along the Colorado on both sides, mcident 
to the depositing of this mass of debris during all the past ages. Going through 
the country on the Arizona side of the river, for several miles below Yuma, one 
encounters the same type of country and soil that is found in the Imperial Valley 
country around Brawley, Calexico and other points west of the river. The fer- 



^y(c:>'-« :)r^r^ 




ON CALIFORNIA. 123 

tility of the black prairie soils of Illinois has astonished people engaged in agricul- 
ture for nearly one hundred years. The fertility of the valley of the Nile has 
been a matter of history for at least 6000 years. Those who are famiHar with 
Illinois prairie soil, and those who know what the valley of the Nile is for agricul- 
ture, know that this lower Colorado River region surpasses both of them. 

If you ask a farmer along this stretch of country if the soil is six feet deep, 
his eyes will open with astonishment at your ignorance. He will tell you no one 
knows whether it is 60 feet, 600 or 6000 feet deep. It is practically without bot- 
tom. It is so thoroughly well mixed with sand, disintegrated granite and other 
rocks that it never bakes. It is as easily worked as a heap of ashes, and responds 
to cultivation in a way that is marvelous. 

Arizona has established an experiment station in the heart of this big valley, 
which is some twenty- four miles long, and in spots ten to twelve miles wide, down 
on the lower level. The results are wonderful. Last week they were cutting a 
crop of alfalfa on this experimental farm, and for seven consecutive months they 
will cut succeeding crops. The only months when the crop is not cut here are De- 
cember and January. 

Cotton and tobacco grow with the greatest luxuriance, and this rich alluvial 
soil will be noted in a very few years as the ideal spot in the whole country for 
dairying, hog raising, the production of poultry and vegetables, which one hesitates 
to call early or late, as they will be perennial. New potatoes will be produced 
in the middle of January, tomatoes will be ripe by the first of March, ripe grapes 
will be gathered in the early days of May, and apricots by the middle of the same 
month. Chickens and turkeys flourish there in the winter time beyond all experi- 
ence anywhere else. 

The rainfall is exceedingly light and comes only three or four times in a whole 
winter. With an abundance of green alfalfa and vegetables, the dry and not over- 
heated climate prevailing in the winter months, chickens are free from the diseases 
that make their raising difficult elsewhere. There is no spot in Southern Illinois or 
Missouri so adapted to the production of corn as this valley along the Colorado 
River. With alfalfa and corn, the butter, cheese, eggs, poultry and pork to be 
raised on a twenty-acre farm will amaze those who have experience in American 
agricultural affairs. 

The winter climate around Yuma is a thing so intoxicatingly salubrious that 
no words can describe it. Those deserts of America, as we have regarded them 
heretofore, seem to defy the ills that human nature elsewhere is so prone to contract 
and suffer from. The atmosphere is as dry as punk, the skies cloudlessly clear, 
the air mild as possible, and every breath seems to be an inspiration of new life. 
The United States has an experiment farm on the mesa just on the outskirts of 
Yuma. Here results even more marvelous than in the valley are produced. Down 
on the lower levels there are little nips of frosty mornings, occasionally during De- 
cember and January, but on the mesa the breath of frost never touches the most 
delicate vegetation. Oranges grown at the Federal experiment station are unsur- 
passed in their delicious quality. 

Yuma is a busy, up-to-date town. The more modern improvements consist 







TWO-YEAR-OLD VINES, IMPERIAL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA. 




SHEEP, IMPERIAL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 



125 



of several blocks of attractive brick buildings, a three-story postoffice building, also 
of brick, and many other nice structures. Among some of the greater improve- 
ments which are being made, are a $35,000 school building, a $75,000 ice plant, 
a fine clubhouse for the railroad employes, a larger passenger depot, and the proba- 
bility of a new courthouse to cost $75,000. There is considerable business done 
there, but the people have not begun to awaken to the vast possibilities of the place. 
They should at once erect an up-to-date tourist hotel. It should have ample 
grounds around it and be planted with all kinds of tropical vegetation. If atmos- 
phere were only transportable like mineral waters, and one could send consignments 
of this Yuma winter air to the East, the inspiration of its health-giving qualities 
would bring 25,000 tourists every winter to the banks of the Colorado River. 

Yuma needs only to make known its chmatic attractions in the parts of the 
East swept every year by blizzards and snowstorms to attract a city full every win- 
ter. The fertility of the valley below will almost make itself known without effort 
on the part of the people. But with a valley full of intelligent and industrious 
rural population, producing fruits and vegetables, poultry, eggs, fresh milk and fra- 
grant butter, Yuma should be one of the most delightful winter resorts in all Amer- 
ica. There is everything to furnish tourists with the most healthful and delicious 
food, and if the air in that region does not drive doctors to seek a living elsewhere, 
it will be because the people do not know how to live properly. 

The Laguna dam will be completed in I 909, and in ten years from today the 
attractions of Yuma as a health resort and the fertihty of these bottom lands will 
be so well known that it will require $1 000 in cash to buy a single acre of it. 










FIG ORCHARD, IMPERIAL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA. 



26 BURTON'S BOOK. 



The Reunion City 



[written for the arrowhead magazine 
for april, 1909.] 

Los ANGELES certainly has the start of all her biggest and most elderly- 
sisters on the North American continent, not to extend our vision farther. 
Why should this not be the Great Reunion City of the continent? The 
very elements which give us the advantage over all rivals in other things point to 
this as the city of all for reunions of all kinds. The reader whose place of abode 
is in the great central heart of the continent may object because of our remoteness 
from population. A little more careful consideration and deeper penetration of 
thought will show this objection to be unfounded; that in fact the distance to be 
traveled in order to reach here is one of the arguments in favor of holding reunions 
on this Coast. 

As a general thing these occasions are not purely business affairs. It is not 
business primarily that draws delegations of various organizations together annually 
or more or less frequently. The great underlying idea in these reunions is socia- 
bility, good-fellowship, to use an Americanism, to have a good time. There is 
not one of these great national gatherings in which the delegates do not look upon 
the opportunity of seeing the country and learning something new as among the 
chief considerations for consenting to be of the delegation. In whatever degree 
this is true, then in the same ratio the longer travel must appear more attractive to 
the delegation. 

We boast much here of sunny skies, equable temperature, fertile soils, great 
crops, oil output, mineral output, opportunities for business and making money. 
But above all these considerations rises the greater one of comfort in life and the 
preservation and restoration of health made possible by the climate of Southern 
California. This section produces 30,000 carloads of citrus fruit a year and 
brings into the country some $10,000,000 of new money annually. The railroads 
make nearly as much more out of this crop. The section also produces nearly 
50,000,000 gallons of crude oil a year, amounting in new wealth to the annual 
production of perhaps $35,000,000. There are other industries of the country 
and production thereof only secondary to these two. But when we come to the 
very heart of the prosperity of Southern California, we must speak of the tourist 
business. 

Let us consider this a moment. The army of tourists coming to Southern 
California has been swelling marvelously for thirty years. Back a generation ago 
a few thousand came. Then a few tens of thousands. But for the last few 
years the number has risen to 50,000, 75,000, and this year to 100,000. It is 
growing year by year and will grow until the tourist business of Southern California 
> will reach a quarter of a million. 

What draws this great army of people away from their homes to visit this 
far-away section of the country? Perhaps we should vary the inquiry and ask. 
What drives them away from home into a comparatively strange land? It is pre- 
cisely the influence which drives the wild fowl of the Arctic regions to this same 



ON CALIFORNIA. 127 

Southern California winter after winter. There are many great cities in the center 
of the continent, but the frost is as sharp, the snow as deep and the blizzards as 
wild in the streets of Chicago among the skyscrapers as on the open prairie of 
Central Illinois. There is no city of refuge from the shafts of the ice king any- 
where east of the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains. It is the climate, the 
scenery, the comfort of life, the antique civilization and the arts of dead races 
found only in this southwestern country that furnish the magnet which draws the 
hundred thousand tourists to these shores. 

If the sharp arrows of the ice king in the winter time set the people of the 
Northwest on the wing to seek sunny climes, the dangerous arrows of the sun king 
in midsummer drive others away from the sweltering valleys and humid shores of 
the central heart of the continent and from the Gulf States to seek an ocean shore 
where breezes are always temperate and suns seldom oppressive. The fact that 
Southern California is 3000 miles from Boston, 2000 from Chicago and 1 000 
from the crests along the continental divide is no obstacle whatever in the way of 
these winter-time chasers of sunbeams, these summer-time seekers after cool breezes. 

Are we not reaching a point in this inquiry where an answer to the question, 
"Why should not Los Angeles be the Great Reunion City of the continent?" be- 
comes evident. There are few intelligent people upon this northern half of the 
western hemisphere who have not a desire of very considerable strength to see 
Southern California. With many of them it is a burning fever which gives them 
rest neither day nor night. Of the hundred million people between the Isthmus of 
Panama and the headwaters of the Yukon River there are easily 20,000,000 who 
are thinking more or less seriously of visiting this section of the country. It is no 
exaggeration to say that half of these, 10,000,000, pretty well-to-do, intelligent 
adults have a more or less fixed purpose in their mind at some time to make Cali- 
fornia their home. 

Here we have a little chain of unquestionable facts all answering the question, 
"Why should not Los Angeles be the Great Reunion City of the continent?" It 
certainly has attractions found in no other section of this region of country. Winter 
or summer the climatic conditions are such that visitors here can pursue both their 
vocations and their avocations almost positively insured against interruptions because 
of weather conditions. Not only the weather will, 325 days out of the year, be 
certainly such as to permit those here to move about without constraint, but to enjoy 
the moving. The weather will be of that equable temperature, of that breezy, 
balmy character, which makes life a delight and not a struggle. It must be ob- 
vious that there lies a strong inducement in this so general desire to visit Southern 
California to select this as the point for holding conventions and reunions. A 
double purpose is fulfilled in holding these conventions here. A twin object is 
reached by the same effort. The reunion is held and all its delights enjoyed here 
as they would be elsewhere, only more sure from interruption or inconveniences, 
and at the same time the desire to see Southern California is gratified. We must 
not lose sight of the important fact that on the occasions of these reunions the rail- 
roads in all parts of the United States make low-fare rates for the delegates who 
participate in these gatherings. Southern California may be seen at less cost on 
such occasions than where no special rates are in force among the transportation 
companies. Besides, the delegates travel in special cars for each delegation, friends 
are with friends, and one scarcely feels as if away from home a moment during 
these excursions across the continent. If it costs a little more per capita to hold a 



128 BURTON'S BOOK. 

reunion in Los Angeles than in Chicago, remember the travelers see from three 
times to ten times as much of their country by coming here. Other cities undoubt- 
edly have attractions. But if Los Angeles is selected as the place of meeting, 
those attending the convention may see not only the cities of the great central val- 
leys, but also those upon the mountains. If such reunion is held in Chicago, nothing 
of the great western half of the continent with its magnificent mountain scenery is 
visited at all. If Denver is the goal, then the Pacific Coast is not seen. But by 
selecting Los Angeles, eastern people see Chicago and St. Louis, Omaha and St. 
Paul, Albuquerque, Denver and Salt Lake as well as the Pacific Coast. The 
railroads always arrange their tickets for these occasions in such a way that dele- 
gates may come west over one great transcontinental route and return east over 
another. 

Countless thousands of people in the central valleys of the United States have 
never seen the ocean. They have never feasted their eyes upon a mountain height 
or tremblingly looked down into the almost fathomless canons of the great mountain 
gorges. There are few thrills in life so ecstatic as that which comes on first gazing 
upon the rippling waves or storm-tossed crests of the great ocean. If one is going 
to see anythmg, why not see it at its best, in its largest example? The Pacific is 
the father of all oceans, the most poetical and romantic by all means. On the 
way out here all the glories of the mountain heights are possible to see. When 
California is the objective point, a visit to the indescribable wonders of the Grand 
Canon of Arizona is possible. So the visitor may take a side trip and see all the 
sublimity and beauty of the Yosemite. He may go back by the northern route 
and visit the Yellowstone Park, a combination, one might say, of both the Grand 
Canon and the Yosemite. Persons who dwell along the Mississippi or the Mis- 
souri may think they have gazed upon great rivers with beautiful scenery along their 
banks. They are as nothing compared to the Upper Sacramento for charm of 
scene, nor as compared to the Columbia in the majestic grandeur of its vast volume 
and the entrancing beauty of its wonderful scenery. 

And then again the Southwest has an influence of its own, an attraction pos- 
sessed by no other portion of the United States, a romantic history and the ruins 
of several dead civilizations. People visit Europe at great expense, much incon- 
venience in the way of travel and no end of worry in countries whose language 
they do not know. They may come to Southern California and see a civilization 
through New Mexico and Arizona more unique than anything in Europe. There 
and in California are ruins as interesting as any on the Rhine or the Tiber. 
There are here all of the crowning glories of our own American twentieth-century 
civilization. Leaping these by a hundred years in time we pass over the romantic 
history of the Spanish priests who founded a civilization now ancient among the 
aborigines of the American continent, and back of that reaching thousands of years 
we may see the remains of the Aztec civilization and the ruins of the strange, won- 
derful and interesting cave dwellers. 

Los Angeles is a young city. Twenty-five years ago it would have been 
impossible to have entertained a large convention here. There is no difficulty of 
this kind now. We have more hotel accommodations than Chicago. There is 
no pressure here in entertaining 50,000 winter tourists for five or six months each 
year. We have halls, tabernacles and temples affording ideal opportunities for 
general gatherings, for the sitting of committees and sections of conventions. There 
is no other city in the world with a street-car system so good as ours. In moments 



ON CALIFORNIA. 129 

when the business and pleasures of the reunions are not occupying the attention and 
time of delegates the electric cars reach in a few minutes and for a small piece of 
silver any one of twenty beaches along the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean or 
out through orange groves past scores of beautiful towns, some of them magnificent 
cities. We have roads reaching many of the most sublime gorges of the near-by 
mountains which may be reached by automobile or carriage. 

Thus we may promise those who hold their reunions here a perfect climate, 
ample accommodations for their meetings, the finest to the plainest hotels, a journey 
over nearly the whole American continent, an opportunity of seeing objects of art 
covering three or four civilizations, ruins of considerable antiquity and great beauty, 
and local scenery which for beauty of coloring and sublimity of proportions is sur- 
passed nowhere, matched in few places. 

These facts have come to be very generally known throughout America. 
We have had the greatest church bodies in the country meet here in convention. 
The National Educational Association has held its sessions here. The Masons 
have favored this city as their place of reunion, and this summer the order of Elks 
is here in greater force than ever seen at any former annual reunion. And un- 
doubtedly it is the considerations put forward above which have always made 
conventions held in Los Angeles to be more universally attended and more perfectly 
enjoyed than could have been the case in any other city in the country. 



Look Into the Future 



IT scarcely needs the eyes of a seer to enable one to look into future years and 
see a wonderful industry growing up throughout Southern California, only a 

beginning of which is visible at the immediate moment. The stimulus which 
will give this life is twofold: The absence of abundant timber for building pur- 
poses and the presence of abundant material out of which clay materials for con- 
struction may be wrought. Timber costs more here than in almost any other part 
of the country, costs more now than a few years ago, and will increase in cost 
rapidly with each passing decade. The reason for using wood in the construction 
of buildings has been its cheapness. As the cost of timber advances, almost with 
equal steps the cost of clay materials will decline, bringing the two types of build- 
ing so closely together as to cost that the lasting qualities of the clay will decide 
in its favor. 

It is but about twenty years ago that the first pressed brick plant was set in 
operation in Southern California. The common kiln-dried brick of previous years 
was a spongy, non-enduring building material, which cost more here than elsewhere. 
Since the first pressed brick was made with such satisfactory results, attention has 
gradually been attracted to the vast deposits of material lying idle all over this ter- 
ritory out of which not only brick, but hollow tile, concrete and cement may be 
manufactured. A few years ago salt glazed clay products were attempted with 
entirely satisfactory results. This was followed by the manufacture of terra cotta 
products, tiling, hollow tiles and roofing tiles of various shapes. The quarries of 



130 BURTON'S BOOK. 

material for cement making were opened up and the crushing of rock began for 
use in concrete works. In every instance these efforts, where made by people who 
knew the business, have been successful. The territory is thoroughly proved and 
the excellent quality of the various clays, cement rock and such like raw material 
thoroughly established. There is no doubt entertained by those in the business as 
to the fitness of the raw material. The results have been so encouraging that cor- 
poration has followed corporation, organized to operate in this industry. It is noth- 
ing short of surprising to one going through the office buildings to notice the numer- 
ous names on the doors indicating the multiplication of enterprises formed for the 
purpose of going into brick making, cement manufacturing, hollow tiling and the 
various other varieties of tiles used in the building trades generally. 

The roof of the Virginia Hotel at Long Beach is one of the best examples 
here of what can be done in the use of clay tiling for roofing purposes. The new 
building just erected for the life insurance company on the corner of Sixth and Olive 
streets is an excellent example of the ornamental effect that can be produced by the 
use of clay products. This building is a steel frame, with brick or cement overlaid, 
and faced with a beautiful white tile. Of course, it does not present quite the ar- 
tistic effect of buildings one sees in the cities of Europe, where the carving is done 
by hand. These tiles are all made in molds and then thoroughly burned and 
glazed. But, making allowance for the difference between this mechanical effect 
and that produced by artists directing the hands of workmen in handicraft, the 
effect of this building, overlooking the corner of Central Park, is very satisfactory. 
Examples might be multiplied in hundreds to illustrate the encouraging stage this in- 
dustry has already reached. The scagliola seen in the parlors of the Virginia Ho- 
tel at Long Beach and of the Alexandria Hotel in Los Angeles is said to bear com- 
parison with this kind of work as seen in the most ancient edifices of Europe, and 
not to the detriment of the modern work here in Southern California. The old 
master-workers in this kind of material were accustomed to construct the whole pil- 
lar of this scagliola material and then polish the outside down to the appearance of 
marble. Construction of this kind was permanent. No lapse of years affected the 
appearance of the pillar. In a country like ours, new and semi-developed, where 
this art is so imperfectly understood and labor so exceedingly expensive, such con- 
struction is out of the question. As we progress, undoubtedly in coming years we 
shall have just as lasting and solid work in this building art as the ancient world 
knew. 

The impetus that has been given to this infant industry is so amazing as to 
suggest a word of warning. We have not yet come to that stage of development 
where the cheaper wooden structure will give place generally to the costlier but more 
enduring thing made of clay products. There is some danger of overdoing the 
industry. An infant that grows too rapidly or develops precociously does not 
usually come to the most effective manhood. If too many go hurriedly into this 
enterprise, undoubtedly there will be disasters to meet. The first requisite is thor- 
ough practical skill on the part of those who conduct such an enterprise and direct 
the operation of the plant. The capitalists who put their money into the business 



ON CALIFORNIA. 131 

need not be expert in the different classes of work, but the managers, superintend- 
ents and overseers must be thoroughly skilled and thoroughly earnest and trust- 
worthy, or the unskilled promoters will not make money. Nor will any amount of 
skill, earnestness and honesty make it possible for too many to succeed in these en- 
terprises at the beginning. It is a case, like all others, where due consideration 
should be given and every movement made with caution, the chance of success being 
thoroughly worked out before money is recklessly invested in any of these enterprises. 

With this word of caution it is safe to go on and say that there will be 
steady and considerable growth in this clay-product industry in the building trades 
of Southern California until in years to come it will be one of the leading industries 
of the section. We can look forward to the time when not only ten-story office 
buildings and massive factory structures shall be nearly all made of steel frames 
overlaid with concrete, cement and other clay materials, faced with these beautiful 
glazed tiles, but we can also foresee at not a very distant day a time when the little 
five-room cottage of the average resident in Southern California and the bungalow 
of a greater pretension will be built of hollow tile, of glazed bricks and the various 
clay products for the making of which we have such a great abundance of the best 
kind of material. This industry in these future years will undoubtedly give us here 
employment for a vast army of busy wage-earners. There is scarcely an industry 
to be contemplated which promises so great results in the time to come. Thousands 
will find employment in the gravel pits, clay banks and mountains from which the 
cement material, that for hollow tile and bricks of various classes, and tiling, are 
taken. 

These houses of the future to be constructed of clay materials thoroughly pre- 
pared, well burned, will not only be more artistic by far than the wooden shells we 
are accustomed to now, but they will be better for the health of the indwellers and 
so vastly more lasting that they will prove in the end a real economy. Abundant 
as building material of wood has been for 300 years generally all over America, 
we have never as a people learned to use our materials properly. The Colonial 
houses built of boards, a poor imitation of the marble structures of Greece and the 
cement structures of Italy, were anything but artistic. They were false pretenses 
in every respect and utterly disappointing to the mind of any person with artistic 
temperament. Those who applied this abundant wooden material to the produc- 
tion of Gothic structures were very much more successful from the artistic point of 
view. But who ever lived in a Gothic house in any of the Northern States of 
America and did not shiver with cold six months in the year? They were almost 
uninhabitable. The high, sloping roof cut the bedrooms in the upper story so that 
the occupants had to crouch as they passed about from one portion of the apartment 
to another, and to heat them meant the consumption of about twice as much fuel 
as in a house constructed in a different style. The mission architecture of early 
California was very much more suited to the climate of this part of the country 
than our modern cottages and bungalows made of wood. With the return to the 
use of clay materials of various kinds we shall adapt our style more to the Moorish, 
Italian or Greek type of architecture, and the artistic effect will be a very great 



132 BURTON'S BOOK. 

improvement upon the present wooden buildings. The walls of the building of the 
future constructed of clay material will afford a much less attractive retreat for ver- 
min of different kinds than the wooden building. There will be no reason why 
the floors of the clay habitation of twenty years from now shall not be generally of 
clay. Such floors may prove a little chilly, but with abundance of thick rugs scat- 
tered about and a good furnace m the house there need be no mconvenience and 
far from any suffering experienced. The old-time carpet nailed down to the floor 
to remain undisturbed for anywhere from six months to six years will not be known 
in this part of the world, at least for many years longer. It has generally been 
discarded afready. The house constructed of clay materials will have walls so 
hard, floors so solid and ceilings so smooth and impervious to water that for a 
semi-annual house-cleaning the furniture and rugs may be moved, and a strong 
stream of water turned over the whole house, washing every apartment as clean as 
the day it came from the hands of the workmen. Selecting a fine day for such 
house-cleaning, with the windows and doors all thrown wide open, a few hours' 
time will restore the perfect dryness of walls, ceilings and floors, which will be so 
hard that the absorption of water will be infinitesimal. A house of this kind shall 
be stronger, to quote Shakespeare, than that of the grave-digger himself. A thou- 
sand years will pass over the roofs of a well-constructed house all made of clay 
material, and it will be as good as the day it was finished. There will be nothing 
to decay, nothing to invite or breed vermin, no place to harbor any kind of rodent. 
The weather will not affect it, and the children of the family may play baseball in 
the parlor without affecting the walls, ceihngs or floors of the coming residence, 
when clay material shall be the principal building matter used in Southern California. 
If we look into the future a little farther than above, we shall see the use of 
clay materials in our industries broaden in a marvelous way. The supplies of 
wooden ties used upon railroads in North America is practically exhausted. The 
railroad people have been obliged to turn to Japan for renewals on old lines and 
new extensions. At the rate of consumption the world supply will quickly be ex- 
hausted. The only recourse is to cement railroad ties. When we come to this, 
the industry will have broadened into something marvelous to us of today. It will 
increase greatly the first cost of railroad building, but decrease quite as much the 
cost of maintenance. Another use to which clay products are sure to be put is tele- 
graph and telephone poles. We can see no reason why well-reinforced poles may 
not replace the wooden sticks now in use. As the timber supply becomes more 
nearly exhausted and the cost increases some substitute must be found. In Ger- 
many they talk of glass poles to carry wires, but glass is only a little different from 
reinforced cement. It comes out of the clay and rock products of the world. 
Then, already has begun the use of bricks in street paving and roadmaking. This 
has been so long tried that there is no longer any doubt in the minds of persons of 
experience that the street of the future and the road where traffic is frequent and 
heavy must be made of the hardest kind of brick. If we stop a moment and con- 
template the broadening of the clay products industry as the years come and go, 
we will conceive in our minds one of the vastest of all the material enterprises of 
the country. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 133 



Land Values on Sound Basis 



THE impression has gained widespread and unreasonable circulation that South- 
ern California is a land where booms are the principal industry of the people 
and the principal product of the climate. Real estate is credited with the 
larger portion of this unjust reputation for the encouragement and creation of booms. 
There have been booms, many in number and in kind, in this land. None 
of them have been without foundation, albeit some have been premature. The 
foundation for a rise in values on Southern California real estate has always existed, 
and the ultimate point to be touched has always been looked upon as sure to be 
very high. The premature booms failed, not because the foundation for the rise 
in values did not exist, but because the time was not ripe for the rise to reach the 
high point attained in these premature uplifts. 

Whatever discredit has been attempted to be turned upon real estate in South- 
ern California as a general proposition, the city of Los Angeles has fallen heir to 
the greatest share of this attack upon the reputation of property for intrinsic value. 
The premature booms, let us confess, have affected city property more frequently 
and to a greater degree than property out in the country. This was a natural 
thing, for Los Angeles is the center of this section and has been foreseen for long 
years to be destined to be the metropolis of a very wide section of territory. We 
should compare things here with things in older communities to get a just point of 
view. This city is 500 miles from San Francisco. There will be cities of con- 
siderable size between the two points, but these two must forever be the leading 
cities of Cahfornia. Indeed, to those who give the subject close study, they seem 
destined to be the two leading cities of the whole Pacific Coast from Behring Strait 
to the Straits of Magellan. There are not the opportunities on the west coast of 
America for the creating of large cities that there are on its eastern border. From 
the mouth of the St. Lawrence to that of La Plata there are a round hundred sites 
suitable for the creation of cities of large population, large local trade and over-sea 
commerce. Following the western contour of the continent from Cape Horn to 
Cape Barrow, there are not twenty opportunities for founding great cities. Har- 
bors are lacking from the riatural configuration of the coast, nor can any amount 
of money create many artificial harbors along this vast sea border. Connection with 
the interior of easy character is limited to but a few locations on this coast. Vast 
mountain ridges cut the continent from the Arctic Ocean to the Antarctic, and 
these send immense spurs down coastwise in a quarter of a hundred places. 

The bases of real estate values are two — population and production. The 
certainty of the densest population upon the American continent as sure to center 
in that section known as Southern Cahfornia lays the foundation of high value for 
real estate. Production, the most remunerative of any soil on the whole continent, 
completes whatever is lacking in the population factor in this equation and furnishes 
an immovably solid foundation for high values in real estate. 

Those whose memory may run back a period of twenty-five years dwell per- 
haps with too much emphasis on the values ruhng for real estate here at that time. 
Farming property, without irrigation facilities, of the very choicest character, could 
be bought at that time for from $25 to $50 an acre. The only use to which it 

10 



ON CALIFORNIA. ' 135 

could be put was the production of hay or grain. The net profit to be derived 
from such farm enterprises was not a high rate per cent, on the cost of the land at 
that time. Farming land not now susceptible of irrigation, nor likely to be in the 
future, has not advanced very much beyond these prices. The uses to which such 
land can be put are about the same now as then. The crops bring, one year with 
another, a little better prices, and therefore the value of the land has naturally 
risen — perhaps 50 per cent. The rise is justified by the comparative profits of 
that time with this. Many far-seeing people, here twenty-five years ago, then ar- 
gued that the time would come when all lands suitable for the growth of alfalfa — 
although an ordinary, plain farming proposition — would be worth $500 an acre. 
That intrinsic value existed in these lands at that time, although the market value 
was perhaps not more than one-fifth the sum. These lands suitable for alfalfa 
meadows have not yet touched the $500-an-acre mark. But the intrinsic value is 
there and the market value will yet rise to correspond. 

In that earlier period the general view was that raw lands, with proper water 
privileges connected with them, suitable for the production of oranges and lemons, 
were intrinsically worth $250 an acre. Planted to orange or lemon trees, well 
cared for until about the time of profitable production, these lands were held then 
at about $500 an acre. Orange and lemon groves today of the better classes are 
selling easily at from $1500 to $2000 an acre. There is little or no raw land 
left with ample water privileges suitable for citrus fruit cultivation. These types 
of lands are pretty well all taken up and appropriated to their proper uses. A 
rise of 400 per cent, in the value of farming land in twenty-five years may look to 
those not intimately acquainted with the facts as a boom. Persons looking at the 
matter in this way may find it difficult to justify such an apparently enormous rise 
in value. These orchards are bringing such prices because the holders will take 
no less and the buyers want the property. It is not a matter of sentiment at all. 
The holders demand these apparently high prices because they know the value is 
in the property and that the prices are reasonable. The value is there and the 
price is reasonable because for a period of half a dozen years, if not half a score, 
without a single interruption, crops have been harvested, marketed and the net re- 
turns banked, which will be a larger percentage upon the investment than that to 
be derived from any other farming land on the American continent used for any 
purpose. We are speaking of the ratio between the cost price of the land and 
the net profits banked for the marketed crops. 

Walnut groves cost less than orange groves, although the price at which these 
are held is regarded by those who do not understand the matter as excessively, if 
not exorbitantly, high. These groves are usually transferred from the seller to the 
buyer at about $ I 000 an acre. The Times, within a few weeks of the writing 
of this article for the Midwinter Number, reported a case near the town of Fuller- 
ton where, from an eight-acre walnut grove, the owner had put in bank net returns 
amounting to $1600. This is $200 an acre net profit from the crop. If that 
little patch of fertile soil could be purchased for $ I 000 an acre, the buyer would 
have a good expectation of its earning 20 per cent, revenue on his investment one 
year with another. The revenue is 1 per cent, on a valuation of $2000 an acre. 
If one regard it as improbable that the crop one year with another for, say, ten 
years, will be as abundant as this year, or that the market is not likely to be con- 
tinuously as good as at this time, he still has a wide margin of income to meet any 
reasonable expectation of crop failure or of poor markets. 



136 • BURTON'S BOOK. 

This matter of poor markets for California products is a thing not hkely to 
disturb the owners of property here. Wheat grows anywhere across the American 
continent, whichever way you measure it, east to west or north to south. Wheat 
is a crop that grows in all parts of the world. It is, to be sure, a common food 
commodity for the world, but the production is never likely to fall very greatly 
below the demand. There are only a few spots of comparatively narrow territory 
on the face of this globe on which we live where the choice products of Southern 
California meet with any competition. This is true of oranges, lemons, apricots, 
walnuts, almonds, olives and several other products common to the soil of Southern 
California. The limit of production of these fruits on the North American conti- 
nent is very nearly reached. There is no surplus of supply over demand at the 
present time, and the population is growing more rapidly than the increase in pro- 
duction. The growth of population will not stop in the United States in a hundred 
years, when we are likely to have a quarter of a billion consumers of food products. 
The crops of these fruits will reach their ultimate limits in less than a quarter of a 
century and will never be sufficient to meet the demand. 

Still turning our eyes back a quarter of a century, about this time of the year 
twenty-five years ago a church society purchased two lots on the corner of Fifth 
and Fort streets, the latter now known as Broadway. The parcel of property 
measured 120 feet on Broadway and ran back along Fifth street a depth of 165 
feet. The price paid for the lot was $5000. This is but a little more than $40 
a front foot. The property today is worth perhaps $5000 a foot. That would 
be an extreme figure for it under existing conditions. The rise in this parcel of 
property, which is a fair measure of what has taken place generally throughout the 
city, may possibly seem very great. But the population of the city in I 883 was 
not 15,000. As this year closes it must be at least 300,000. At the time the 
lot was sold the best use it could be put to would have been to have constructed 
upon it, say, four small cottages, which might have rented for a gross sum of $100 
a month. The investment would have been about $10,000. The gross income 
would have been 1 per cent, a year, the net income hardly 6 per cent. At the 
present time on that property, costing, say, $600,000 for the raw land, conditions 
would justify the erection of a ten-story building, to cost as much more. The in- 
vestment of nearly $1,250,000 at the present time would produce a larger per- 
centage of net revenue than was possible from the smaller investment of twenty-five 
years ago. 

An excellent way to reach a fair and solid conclusion as to whether the value 
of property in any given city is excessive is to compare it with prices ruling in cities 
of the same class. If one should learn that property in a given part of this city 
twenty-five years ago was selling at $50 to $100 an acre, and that this property 
is now worth $50 to $100 a front foot for lots of, say, 150 feet deep, the com- 
parison may seem to lead to the decision that the present value is only based on 
boom conditions — is excessive and unreasonable. The property a quarter of a 
century ago was available for no other purpose than barley growing. It is avail- 
able today for the choicest residences in a city of 300,000 inhabitants. The high- 
est values at which residence sites are held in this city today range from $100 to 
$125 a front foot. There is only one boulevard in the city where the highest 
figure prevails. This boulevard is 1 40 feet wide. The lots are about 200 feet 
deep. There is not a residence upon the street which cost less than $15,000, and 
some of them cost from $25,000 to $30,000 each. There are not a hundred lots 



ON CALIFORNIA. 137 

on this reach of thoroughfare all told, counting both sides. In this district of the 
city where the choicest homes now exist the usual price of property is $ I 00 a front 
foot for lots 1 50 feet deep. By going half a mile farther out in any direction, 
choice residence property may be had for $50 a front foot, and good property for 
less. There still remains an abundance of residence property in very nice districts 
of the city held at only $10 a front foot. We should be careful not to compare 
these prices with those in some village in the Western States, or even in towns of 
respectable proportions as to inhabitants. Select any city in the country with a 
population of 300,000, and compare our prices with theirs, and the result of such 
comparison would be the conviction that the prices ruling here are justified, are 
reasonable, are low. 

If from contemplating a period a quarter of a century ago we turn our minds 
in the other direction and look a quarter of a century ahead, careful consideration 
of the conditions likely to rule at that future epoch will convince the student of real 
estate values that there is room here for a very considerable rise in the value of real 
estate. If we consider business property and realize that in the city of San Fran- 
cisco, with a present population not very much greater than ours, parcels of realty 
with a depth of 1 00 feet are held at $ 1 0,000 a front foot, it would seem not a 
flight of the imagination to conclude that twenty-five years from now good business 
property in the city of Los Angeles is likely to be worth at least that amount. It 
is the conclusion reached by all reasonable, intelligent people that before another 
quarter of a century shall have passed the urban population in Los Angeles will be 
quite a million. During the current century, population in this city has grown at 
the rate of 20,000 some years, 25,000 in others, 30,000 in a few, and 35,000 
in at least one. If we assume a growth of 25,000 a year, we have 100,000 in 
four years and a million in forty. Deduct our present population of about 300,- 
000 and there is every prospect of a million somewhere about the end of the first 
quarter of the current century. We must turn our attention to the two or three 
largest cities in the United States to reach a fair conclusion as to the probable 
value of business real estate in such a city as Los Angeles at the end of this first 
quarter of the twentieth century. If there is any such city now existing where 
business property of the best class can be had for $ 1 0,000, the place is unknown 
to the writer. 

There is one element in this problem we are trying to solve not brought into 
prominent notice up to this time. It has been allowed to remain in the background 
because it is the one most frequently dwelt upon, the one on which is laid all the 
responsibility for the boom conditions commonly alleged to exist in real estate mat- 
ters in this city, and lastly because in the opinion of the writer it is the corner-stone 
in the foundation on which the intrinsic value of real estate here rests. The climate 
of Southern California is referred to. This noun is not often used without the very 
significant adjective "glorious" being coupled with it. It has been the inspiring cry 
of Southern Californians for half a century and it has been the derision of outsiders 
for a quarter of a century. Southern California and the phrase "glorious climate" 
have gone together as long as the writer of this article can remember. Those of 
us to the manner born, or at least old-timers here, have found in this phrase the 
basis for all our hopes. The Thomases or those of other appellation who have 
indulged their doubt about Southern California have found in this the source for all 
their derision. The Californian is right, and the outsider is rank indeed who de- 
rides the thought that real estate values of a solid and lasting character may be 



138 BURTON'S BOOK. 

based on such an airy thing as chmate, which after all is only air. The Californlan 
is charged with being a manufacturer of hot air. 

This glorious climate, otherwise the atmosphere which envelops Southern Cal- 
ifornia, is the thing which gives our soils their fertility, our crops their revenue-pay- 
ing ability. An enthusiastic boomer of Los Angeles and Southern California says 
in words of soberness, from his point of view, that the pepper tree has brought more 
people to Southern California because of its poetic beauty than the old missions with 
their rime of age upon their heads, or the orange groves with their great bank ac- 
counts. But what brought the pepper tree, the missions and the orange groves if 
it was not the atmosphere which' overlies the whole of this land of wealth, beauty 
and health? 

In the three words last used may be found the talisman which guides all feet 
to Southern California. It has guided the feet of people here in such large numbers 
during the last twenty-five years that the population of 20,000 has increased to the 
present one of nearly half a million. It will continue to guide the feet of persons 
in such large numbers in all of the century that lies before us. This glorious cli- 
mate of ours, of which we make so loud a boast, of which our detractors make so 
common a vehicle of derision, gives to the country all its beauty. This beauty will 
draw here the sentimental, the artistic, the poetical temperaments of our race. We 
shall have here not only the country of orange groves and of the vine and the fig, 
but we shall have here the artistic race of the American continent which in time to 
come will make California as celebrated as Italy or France. We have a climate 
here which gives the human voice a resonance and accuracy which will make South- 
ern California the land of song for the Western Hemisphere that Greece and Italy 
are and have been for the Old World. This atmosphere gives the country not only 
its beauty, but its wealth. The opportunities for making a better living more easily 
than elsewhere have drawn much of these multitudes who have caused such a great 
increase in our population. The Great Southwest is for the future the country of 
development, enterprise and achievement. There are thousands of level high roads 
here on which the feet of the capable and enterprising may march in comfort to 
success and the building up of vast fortunes. The next twenty-five years will see 
a development in this Southwest in mining enterprise, in manufacturing, in domestic 
and over-sea commerce, In which thousands will become the millionaires of the 
middle of the century. 

What will not a man do for his life? Of the ninety millions of human be- 
ings in the United States today, how many of them of all ages, from the baby in 
the cradle to those decrepit with age, are in anything like comfortable health? In- 
valids are numbered in all communities by the thousands, in the United States by 
the millions. Their physicians are warning these invalids that life for a single other 
year is an impossibility in the insalubrious climates where their homes are now sit- 
uated. Physicians have sent tens of thousands of persons with their families to 
Southern California in the past twenty-five years, and they will send them in in- 
creasing numbers with every passing year. This glorious climate and its fertile 
soils create a great place for the production of fruits of all kinds that grow from 
the ground; but the most numerous, most beautiful and Important crop that the 
glorious climate gives us is the great crop of sturdy, handsome boys and girls who 
revel in the almost-perpetual sunshine of this country as the bees and the humming 
birds revel among the flowers, the creation of the same glorious climate. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 139 

Citrus Fruits in California 



CITRUS fruit culture in Southern California dates back 1 40 years. The 
Spanish missionaries who came up from Mexico and established the chain 
of missions from San Diego Bay to San Francisco for 600 miles along the 
coast, whose ruins are now so interesting, brought the seeds of the orange and lemon 
with them and set out small orchards in the grounds surrounding the missions as 
far north as Santa Barbara. 

Here the cultivation of citrus fruit came to a standstill until about fifty years 
ago, when Americans and Europeans began to settle, especially near Los Angeles. 
They found the mission orchard at San Gabriel to be producing pretty good or- 
anges. 

Nearly all these new settlers for thirty years planted a few orange and lemon 
trees around their homes for family use. There was no outside market to speak 
of. By 1870 Hon. B. D. Wilson and L. J. Rose, both now dead, were pretty 
large growers in San Gabriel, and J. W. Wolfskill in Los Angeles had several 
acres of orange trees. Some of the fruit from these groves were shipped by steamer 
to San Francisco. 

These were nearly all seedling trees, produced by putting orange or lemon 
seeds in the ground and trusting to chance to get a tree bearing good fruit. Most 
of them bore poor fruit. It took a dozen years for the tree to bear and then it 
would not do to remove it and wait as long again for another to grow, which might 
be no better. 

Hon. B. D. Wilson and J. W. Wolfskill did select their best trees and from 
these budded on seedling stock and both of them succeeded in producing a very 
good variety of fruit. 

Prior to I 880 an American Consul at San Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, sent 
the Treasury Department at Washington a few plants of an orange found at that 
place. Most of these were sent to Florida, but one was sent to Riverside, Cali- 
fornia, where it was set in the ground. The reputation of the fruit had come with 
the plant, and as fast as cuttings were to be had, seedling stock was grafted to the 
new variety. As soon as these trees began to bear it was found that the soil and 
climate of Southern California suited this orange better than in its original habitat. 
The plants sent to Florida did not produce so good results. 

There is a peculiar formation at the bud end of this Brazil orange. It is 
really an attempt on the part of nature to produce twins, an orange within an or- 
ange. From the appearance of this protuberance the fruit received the name of 
navel orange, and because the first plant came from Washington it was called the 
Washington navel. With its advent here the planting of seedling oranges was 
stopped in 1 880 and the Washington navel became the leading orange of Southern 
California. As all the world nearly knows, it contains no seeds, it grows of a 
very uniform size, fairly large; the skin is pretty thick as it grows here, but the 
flesh or pulp is tender, it is full of juice, and the flavor has a piquancy peculiarly 
grateful to most palates. 

About 1 880 the Southern Pacific Railroad had been constructed not only 
from San Francisco to Los Angeles, but had been pushed on into and through Ari- 
zona. In a year or two more it was at New Orleans, and Southern California had 



140 BURTON'S BOOK. 

railway connection by two lines to all parts of the United States. Here was a 
market for all the oranges possible to produce. 

Soon after this a great influx of new settlers came to Southern Califorina. In 
1887 the Santa Fe Railway had been built in here and the great boom culminated 
and collapsed. Many of those who came here went into the business of orange 
growing. So great was the demand for orange trees that the young trees in ten- 
acre patches were sold for as much as $ 1 0,000. 

The way young trees are produced is this: Orange seeds are put in the 
ground in small areas, surrounded by laths placed as close together as on the walls 
of a house. These are covered on top with branches of trees. These are nursery 
beds. When a year old the small plants are set out in nursery rows. Here they 
grow for two years. Then they are cut back and the bud of the navel orange is 
inserted. When these buds are a year old the young tree is fit to set in the orchard. 

As stated above, it requires a dozen years for an orange tree to become a 
bearer to any degree worthy of much consideration. Thus it appears the crop of 
oranges in Southern California was not of much consequence from a national point 
of view until after 1890. A large part of the rather small crop at that time was 
seedlings, and there had been no notable advantage over the imported orange, which 
could be laid down in any market as far west as Chicago at less cost than the Cal- 
ifornia fruit. 

From 1 884 to the present time the great growth of urban and interurban pop- 
ulation has forced residences on small areas further and further into the groves of 
seedling oranges which had nearly all been planted close to some city or town. 
The orchards disappeared. In years of marked depression in the orange trade 
many trees were removed to make room for some crop which paid better. At this 
time the seedling orange crop is a very small percentage of the whole. It will soon 
have disappeared entirely. 

The orange season lasts the whole year through. The crop year is counted 
from November 1 of one year to October 31 of the next. Taking 1892-3 as the 
initial point, the crops of California oranges run as follows: 

Season. Boxes. Season. Boxes. 

1892-3 1,972,500 1897-8 5,174,400 

1893-4 1,587,500 1898-9 3,654,000 

1894-5 2,545,200 1899-1900. 6,624,000 

1895-6 2,323,500 1900-01 8,964,000 

1896-7 2,469,600 

In all these figures lemons are included for the reason that the railroads did 
not attempt to segregate them until the last year, when the lemons made about 
1 ,250,000 boxes of the total. 

The trees in an orange orchard are generally planted in straight rows, ninety 
trees to the acre. In old days 100 trees were put on the land, but better re- 
sults are obtained from the smaller number. Some fastidious people plant the trees 
in what they call the "quincunx," or five by five form, that is, in a square, one tree 
is set in the center and one at each corner. About seventy-five to the acre are set. 
The claim is made that more sun is more equally divided among the trees. 

The soil for an orange grove must be carefully selected. It must be a gen- 
erous soil. Alexander Craw, when he was foreman for J. W. Wolfskill, used to 
assert nearly twenty years ago, that by proper fertilizing and pruning he could se- 
cure with almost absolute certainty five boxes of oranges to the tree, year after year. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 141 

Taking all the section over, two or three boxes to the tree will be about the 
average for bearing oranges. A box contains about sixty pounds net of fruit. Soil 
which is to bear seventy-five trees which when full grown will cover almost its entire 
area and tower twenty to thirty feet in the air, covered with a heavy waxy foliage 
all the year around, producing blossoms in April and each bearing 1 20 to 300' 
pounds of such generous fruit as the oranges, soil which will yield from half a ton 
to over a full ton each year, that fruit taking the greater portion of the year to ma- 
ture, must be rich. But the soil must not be heavy. Perfect drainage must be 
provided to take the water away from the roots of the trees. 

In old days the trees were trimmed up into bare poles to a height of about 
six feet. The irrigation water was applied by throwing up a small embankment 
of earth, making a "basin" about six feet square around the roots of the tree. 
These basins were filled with water once in two to four weeks all summer long. 
Now the trees are scarcely pruned at all. The branches are allowed to sweep the 
ground, so that in a full-grown grove there is no more than room to drive a wagon 
between the rows. The water is not let run close to the bole of the trees, but is 
put on in small rivulets out between the rows. Less water and more cultivation is 
used. One inch of water is enough for ten acres of good land, provided the cul- 
tivation is intense. 

Until fifteen years ago but little attention was given to fertilizing. Now 
about eight pounds of good commercial fertilizer is given to each tree once in three 
years. This is for bearing groves and by the best horticulturists. 

As stated, the trees blossom in April. By July the oranges are as large as 
a walnut to as large as a hen's egg. In October they begin to color, and by the 
last of October a few begin to have color enough to pick. But even as late as 
the end of December, when the color is high, the fruit is a very indifferent article 
of human food. It is immature and too tart. January fruit is better, and by Feb- 
ruary it is excellent, being in its prime in March. These remarks refer to the navel 
orange. Other varieties — the St. Michael, the Mediterranean sweet and the Va- 
lencia late — come later, the Valencia latest of all, not being marketable before 
July to October. 

The picking is done by putting specially constructed ladders against the trees, 
on which men mount, cut the stem with a knife specially made for the purpose, and 
send the fruit down a chute made of coarse sacking to the ground. Here it is let 
lie in the sun nearly all day, and then is hauled to the packing houses. 

In the packing houses all the dust and stains are removed by a process of 
washing and brushing, and then, when thoroughly dried, the fruit is run along in- 
clined planes, provided with a coarse network, through which the sizes fall into 
boxes beneath. From there oranges are repacked in layers in the orange boxes, 
the best being wrapped in tissue paper, and these boxes being nailed up the num- 
bers, ranging from 80s to 400s, and the brands are stenciled on. They are now 
ready for the car, into which they are carefully packed and sent to market. 

It costs about 50 cents per box to take the fruit from the tree and put it in 
the car. This includes the cost of the box. 

The railroads charge a "postage stamp" rate on citrus fruit, $1.15 per 100 
pounds to any point on Missouri River common points or Atlantic Coast common 
points. A box of oranges, box and all, weighs a little over seventy pounds, so the 
freight charge is usually reckoned at 85 cents per box; lemons weigh a little more, 
and the freight is about $ 1 per box. The charges on a car of oranges comes to 



^Kwryx~y?^nijx::)jjn)^c? 



1 -§ 




OJJCj 



ON CALIFORNIA. 143 

about $325 per car, in round numbers. For carrying the last year's crop above 
to market the railroads received about $7,500,000. What went to San Fran- 
cisco and other coast points paid less than 90 cents per box. 

The fruit must go in ventilator-refrigerator cars, so constructed as to keep out 
the frost in winter and to permit of icing in the summer. 

Until 1 894 the crops of citrus fruits were all marketed by middlemen. The 
growers sometimes sold their crops on the trees at lump sum; sometimes at so much 
per box of merchantable fruit in the orchard; sometimes at the depot. Others sold 
on commission, consigning to merchants in eastern cities. 

In 1892 A. H. Naftzger of Riverside organized the Southern California 
Fruit Exchange, for the purpose of cooperative marketing of the citrus fruit crops. 
From twenty carloads in 1 880 and less than 4000 carloads in 1 890 the crop had 
increased to nearly 6000 carloads, increasing rapidly each year. The reasons for 
the organization are thus set forth by Mr. Naftzger, organizer of the exchange: 

"When citrus fruit-growing in California emerged from the stage of experi- 
ment and pastime into that of profit-seeking, the problem of markets immediately 
confronted the growers. They were thousands of miles from the populous centers 
in which their fruit must find consumers, and they had practically no home market 
nor agencies through which they could convert it into ready money at remunerative 
figures. It is true there were speculators in the field, but their offers to buy were 
at very low prices, and only spasmodic at best. This is not strange, as these spec- 
ulators were but go-betweens, and the markets being undeveloped, they could only 
offer for the most part to take the fruit on consignment for the growers' account. 
If, passing the speculator by, the grower sought relief by consigning his product to 
the market himself, he was little, if any, the gainer. These were the conditions 
in the early nineties, when the citrus fruits of Cc^lifornia orchards were less than 
one-fourth the present volume. This was before the great freeze had so nearly 
put Florida out of the race, as a competitor, and with a rapidly increasing product, 
and uncertainty as to whether it could be sold at prices to leave the producers a 
profit, the industry was upon anything but sure footing." 

For two years the exchange sold f. o. b. Cahfornia, but according to Mr. 
Naftzger's statement, rebates in one year amounting to $100,000 on rejections at 
the east induced the exchange members to attempt the marketing of the fruit direct. 
Agencies were established at the east to which the fruit was shipped and sold on 
the spot. "Sales delivered" is what the system is called. 

For years the exchange has marketed from 45 to 60 per cent, of the citrus 
fruit crop. Those outside the exchange sell as before, to independent shippers, for 
so much per orchard, or per box spot cash; or they send it out on consignment. 

All the exchange members do not fare alike. The central exchange does 
not handle fruit direct. There are branch exchanges all over the section, each 
community of growers having a separate organization. These local bodies pool 
their crops. So some growers received less, others more, according to their locality. 

The number of trees and the acreage devoted to citrus fruit culture is difficult 
to obtain — to get it accurately is impossible. The Chamber of Commerce of Los 
Angeles has a table which is the nearest approximation to the facts. It shows that 
there were in Southern California in 1902 2,485,807 bearing orange trees and 
1,451,697 not yet in bearing. The number of lemon trees is given at 30,736 
bearing, and 498,5 1 1 non-bearing. These are credited to the various counties as 
follows : 



144 BURTON'S BOOK. 



County — 
Santa Barbara . 

Ventura 

Los Angeles . . 

Orange 

San Diego .... 

Riverside 

San Bernardino 





Non- 




Non- 


Bearing. 


Bearing 


Bearing. 


Bearing. 


1,510 


740 


73,440 


75,860 


66,485 


33,785 


95,601 


42,736 


579,585 


273,080 


1 72,800 


25,750 


243,328 


118,720 


24,780 


52,548 


75,000 


45,000 


170,000 


250,000 


772,899 


380,642 


74,115 


11,617 


750,000 


600,000 


120,000 


40,000 



Totals 2,488,807 1,451,967 730,736 498,511 

Figuring 75 trees to the acre the total acreage would be 33,140 acres in 
bearing orange trees, and nearly 20,000 in non-bearing. The lemon acreage 
would be 9740 acres in bearing and 6580 non-bearing. 

Taking the bearing acreage in citrus fruits it appears that the profit per acre 
as here figured, that is, the cost on the tree after all expenses of production is in- 
curred, is nearly $2 per tree on the whole crop, or $150 to $200 per acre. 

Now a great many groves in the hands of careless persons pay hardly any- 
thing. As a matter of fact the well-kept groves properly situated as to soil, cli- 
mate and water, pay from $300 to as high as $500 per acre. The cost of culti- 
vation must come out of these figures. 

Such groves sell when on the market for from $500 to $1000 per acre. As 
much as $2000 has been refused for some. 

The only difference between lemons and oranges in the respects here discussed 
is that the lemon tree is more delicate than the orange, more susceptible to frost. 
The lemon, therefore, requires a more carefully selected location. It does not re- 
quire so much water. The lemon bears two crops a year, one is gathered in No- 
vember, the other in the early summer. The fruit takes several weeks to cure, after 
being picked. The varieties most produced here are the Villa Franca and the 
Lisbon. 

Independent shippers put the matter this way: Trees to acre, 90; boxes to 
tree, 3, or 250 to acre; cost of production, 50 cents; profit to growers, 50 cents; 
cost to buyer at depot, $1. Thus it costs $1250 to care for a ten-acre grove, and 
the grower gets $1250 profit, the buyer paying $2500 for the fruit on the grove. 
The buyer's account stands this way: Cost, $1 per box at depot; package and 
packing, 35 cents; freight to market at $1.15 per 100 pounds, 83 cents, the box 
weighing 72 pounds, icing 1 cents. Laid down in New York the box costs the 
shipper $2.28. When rot and nips are considered, the price must be $2.50 in 
eastern markets before the shipper makes anything. 

The California Orange Growers publish this as the cost of production: 

The cost of producing a box of California oranges as gathered from a large number 

of growers and packers, exclusive of interest, is, per box $1 .05 

Apportioned as follows: Cost of labor, per box 59 

Cost of material used in growing and packing. . 46 

Cost of transportation to eastern market, including 10 cents for ice 93 

Total cost per box on eastern markets 1.98 

(Refrigeration costs 20 cents per box — for 1907, 58 per cent, of orange shipments 
were shipped under refrigeration). 

The cost of producing a box of oranges in Italy is 65 

And of transportation to New York 25 

Or total cost of foreign oranges in New York harbor per box 90 

They pay a duty per box of 72 

Or a total cost on the market per box of 1 .62 

Or an advantage still in favor of the foreign grower of 36 

The same authority gives the following exhibit of the — 



ON CALIFORNIA. 



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146 BURTON'S BOOK. 



Banking in Los Angeles 



FORTY-TWO years ago John G. Downey, who had served a term as Gov- 
ernor of California, being then living in Los Angeles, proposed to the 
citizens the organization of a bank. One of them said: "I hope we will 
never have a bank in Los Angeles. We have done well enough without one." 
But in spite of this, Downey, with the cooperation of Alvinza Hayward, the 
millionaire mining man of San Francisco, in February, 1 868, opened the doors of 
the first bank in the city, with a capital of $100,000. In the following September 
the firm of Hellman, Temple & Co. was established, and in 1871 the two banks 
joined in the first incorporated bank in the city. The Hellman whose name appears 
in the firm was Isaias W. of that name, now president of the Wells Fargo National 
Bank of San Francisco as well as of the Farmers' and Merchants' National Bank 
of Los Angeles. He is the oldest among all the bankers of the city, probably of 
the State. 

Things moved slowly for a period of thirty years, but in 1 896 there were 
thirteen banks in Los Angeles, with a combined capital and surplus of $4,716,000, 
deposits $1 1,300,000, resources $16,756,000. 

The depression brought about by the panic of 1 893 was felt throughout the 
whole country, excepting in Los Angeles, where the financial institutions grew right 
along without let or hindrance. 

Let us skip over the heads of things. In September, 1 900, the capital and 
surplus of all the banks were $5,073,000, deposits $23,470,000, resources $30,- 
1 33,000. The increase in the deposits in the four years is very marked. 

Pass on to I 906. During this year of great prosperity the capital and sur- 
plus of the banks increased to $14,776,000, deposits to $83,400,000, resources 
to $110,497,000. 

Here we have a period of nine and a half years from September, 1896, to 
April, 1906, showing an increase in capital and surplus of 209 per cent., deposits 
660 per cent., resources 570 per cent. 

Now let us take the whole country for ten years from 1895 to 1905. We 
find that the increase in capital and surplus for all the United States was 65 per 
cent., deposits 130 per cent., resources 124 per cent. 

This money did not lie idle. In 1900 the exchanges passing through the 
clearing-house of Los Angeles amounted to $1 13,586,000. In 1905 they were 
$449,953,000, or a growth of nearly 300 per cent. Now in the whole country 
during these same years the increase was only 68 per cent. 

For the years indicated the exact clearings were: 1890, $31,019,721; 
1895. $57,046,832; 1900, $113,766,378; 1905. $479,985,289. For the 
great year. 1907. the exchanges passing through the Los Angeles clearing-house 
amounted to $600,000,000. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 147 

There are now thirty-six banks in the city of Los Angeles. Ten of these 
operate under a national charter, eleven are commercial banks operating under State 
charters, eight are savings banks, and six do a trust business. Some of the savings 
banks carry commercial deposits subject to check; also some of those doing a trust 
business carry commercial accounts. Los Angeles has two banks conducted by 
Japanese; their business is nearly all with their own people. Chinese residents do 
a considerable amount of business, but they do it with banks conducted by Amer- 
icans. 

During the past year or thereabouts two small banks have gone into liquida- 
tion and several consolidations have been effected, while only one new name has 
been added. The net reduction in the number of institutions has been about a 
dozen. The reason for the consolidation is mainly a rule adopted by the clearing- 
house which makes it obligatory for any institution asking for clearing privileges 
to have a paid-in capital of at least $200,000. This requirement has been gen- 
erally, if not in all cases, complied with, and if there has been any failure to do 
so it is on the understanding that steps to comply with the rule are in progress. 

The capital stock of these thirty-six banks is in excess of $13,000,000, and 
they hold in the surplus and undivided profits funds about $7,000,000, making 
practically a capitalization of $20,000,000. The heaviest capitalized institution 
is the Farmers' and Merchants' National, with $L500,000 capital and $1,800,- 
000 surplus and undivided profits. This is followed by the First National Bank, 
with a capital of $1,250,000 and surplus and undivided profits of $1,105,103. 
The American National has a capital of $1,000,000, and the Los Angeles Trust 
Company and the Southern Trust Company have each a capital of $1,000,000. 
The Security Savings Bank has a capital of $850,000, with $486,833 in the 
surplus account. The German- American Savings Bank is capitalized for $600,- 
000 and carries a surplus of $322,61 7. 

The combined deposits of all the banks has run to over $101,000,000. At 
the present time the deposits aggregate about $85,000,000. The deposits in the 
First National Bank, when the latest general bank statement was made on June 
30, 1908, were $12,685,249; the Farmers' and Merchants' National, $9,661,- 
329. The Security Savings Bank at that date had deposits amounting to $ 1 9,- 
222,503, and the German-American Savings Bank had $8,547,950. 

The loans and discounts account showed a total outstanding of $63,453,332. 
This is a vital point in sound banking. Savings banks, trust companies and all 
financial institutions were holding 25 per cent, of their deposits in reserve. Owing 
to the peculiar conditions which had been prevailing, some of the savings banks 
were carrying about this per cent, of deposits in reserve. The Security had out 
$13,801,756 of its deposits as shown above of nearly $20,000,000; of over 
$8,500,000 the German- American was carrying nearly $2,000,000. The com- 
mercial banks were handled with extreme care. The Farmers' and Merchants' 
National had out in loans a little more than $6,000,000, and the First National 
$9,474,135. 

During the time of improved business conditions in the last half of 1908 the 
banks all strengthened their positions materially. Deposits show a large increase 



ON CALIFORNIA. 149 

over the middle of the year, and if the figures for the end of December were avail- 
able for this issue of The Times, the deposits account would probably be over 
$90,000,000. Savings banks have in the half-year been able to lend a larger 
amount of money on mortgages, owing to the return of confidence among the people. 
Los Angeles bankers are at all times disposed to an ultra-conservative course rather 
than the contrary. The large commercial banks feel it unsafe to let their reserve 
fund run much below 35 per cent, of deposits, and some of them never get down 
to 40 per cent. None at any time touch the limit set by the United States Treas- 
ury as the danger point. 

The banks of California have availed themselves of the provisions of the 
Vreeland-Aldrich act, passed at the latest sitting of Congress, and the State is now 
organized into clearing-house districts. The city of Los Angeles is one such dis- 
trict, and the country banks are similarly organized. All are associated in a 
central clearing-house, and each district has its own examiner for all banks in the 
district- All are subject to the central organization. This will provide a needed 
check on all banks disposed to too much leniency in granting loans, or to too little 
discrimination as to the validity of the security pledged. Any disobedience to the 
law on the part of the officers of any bank will be stopped. It is expected that 
this businesslike and fair way of dealing with banks by bankers themselves will 
prove a sufficient guarantee of the safety of the money of depositors. 

Conservative banking in Los Angeles or elsewhere is profitable as well as 
honorable. The bankers stand very high in the estimation of the business public. 
It is often a nice problem, not easily solved, for the banker to decide just at what 
point he should stop lending money placed on deposit for safe-keeping, so that he 
shall be always certainly able to meet every check presented for payment, and yet 
use the money of the people in such a liberal way as to encourage the industrial 
and other business interests of the community. As a rule, the bankers of this city 
have displayed the skill necessary to solve the problem. 

Had there been no necessity — from pressure from outside which might have 
forced cash out of this city to outside points less well supplied — the banks of Los 
Angeles in the fall of 1907 need not have suspended specie payment for a day. 
With exception of three small concerns in sparsely inhabited, newer sections of the 
city, none of our banks were embarrassed. The total deposits in the three crippled 
institutions did not amount to $50,000, and the losses will be inconsiderable. 

The banks of Los Angeles pay stockholders dividends of from 6 to 8 per 
cent, per annum as a general rule. Many pay much higher profits. The Mer- 
chants' National, with a capital of $200,000 and surplus of $540,546, paid last 
year I 6 per cent, in dividends. The addition to the surplus fund was heavy. The 
First National paid 20 per cent, on its heavy capitalization. This institution has 
several allied concerns which do a trust and savings business, in which the stock 
is held by the parent bank, and the dividend is out of the profits of all. The 
Farmers' and Merchants' National paid 1 2 per cent, to its stockholders, and the 
Citizens' National paid 1 0. This last-named has a capital of $300,000, nearly 
half a million in the surplus fund, and carries deposits of about $2,500,000. 

Among the savings banks the German-American paid 20 per cent, dividends, 
and the Security 1 5 per cent. 



150 



BURTON'S BOOK. 



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ON CALIFORNIA. 151 

The statement below shows the clearings for the year by months, and also 
comparisons with corresponding months in 1907 and 1906: 

1908. 1907. 1906. 

January «. . . $ 38,183,966 $ 58,241,069 $ 46,833,869 

February 36,677,215 53,195,399 43,283,827 

March 41,133,998 56,333,587 53,188,379 

April 43,4 1 1 ,800 56,386,2 1 7 50,028,948 

May 42,286,824 52,825,885 47,320,065 

June 41 ,939.967 48,836,027 45,599,050 

July 44,071,685 48,849,341 44.857,143 

August 37,793,570 46,526,284 46,197,178 

September 39,2 74,933 43,424, 1 35 44,043,5 1 7 

October 42,992.572 50.165,943 50,94l!l08 

November 44,786,195 37,516,541 53,627,100 

December 50,568,399 29.529.199 52.715.330 



Totals $505,588,756 $581,870,627 $578,635,517 

The year's record in quarterly showings is as follows, together with compari- 
sons with the two former years: 

1908. 1907. 1906. 

First quarter $115,995,179 $167,820,055 $143,306,076 

Second quarter 127,638,591 158,048,129 142,948,064 

Third quarter 121,140,188 138,790,760 135,097.839 

Fourth quarter 140,814,798 117,211,683 157,283,538 



Totals $505,588,756 $581,870,627 $578,635,517 

Clearings for the years 1895 to 1908, both inclusive, follows: 

1908 $505,588,756 1901 $161,466,071 

1907 581,870,627 1900 122,692,555 

1906 578,635,517 1899 90,261,931 

1905 479,985,298 1898 74,413,508 

1 904 345,343,956 1 897 63,663,969 

1903 307,316,530 1896 61,190,399 

1902 245,516,094 1895 62,123,601 

NAMES OF BANKS AND OFFICERS. 

American National Bank — M, J. Monnette, president; Wm. Rhodes Her- 
vey, vice-president; J. C. F. Hull, vice-president; Wm. W. Woods, cashier; A. 
M. Brown, assistant cashier; Geo. Bugbee. assistant cashier. 

American Savings Bank — Wm. Rhodes Hervey. president; Boyle Workman, 
vice-president; J. W. Phelps, cashier; A. M. Gibbs, assistant cashier. 

Bank of Highland Park — G. W. E. Griffith, president; R. D. List, vice- 
president; W. R. Myers, secretary; Oren Lientz, cashier. 

Bank of Southern California — J. M. Neeland, president; J. B. Lankershim, 
vice-president; John W. Mitchell, vice-president; F. E. Edwards, vice-president; 
Henry A. Coit. secretary; J. T. Bunn. assistant secretary. 



152 * BURTON'S BOOK. 

Broadway Bank <^nd Trust Company — Warren Gillilen, president; Geo. I. 
Cochran, vice-president; R. W. Kenny, cashier; J. M. Spaulding, assistant cashier. 

California Savings Bank — M. P. Snyder, president; Arthur Letts, vice- pres- 
ident; F. H. Nichols, cashier; Allen Durand, assistant cashier; S. G. Lehmer, 
secretary. 

Central National Bank — Geo. Mason, president; John R. Mathews, vice- 
president; S. F. Zombro, vice-president; James B. Gist, cashier; A. M. Beamon, 
assistant cashier. 

Citizens National Bank — f^- J- Waters, president; J. Ross Clark, vice-pres- 
ident; A. J. Waters, cashier; Geo. E. F. Duffet, assistant cashier; E. T. Petti- 
grew, assistant cashier. 

City and County Bank — W. B. Ames, president; E. L. Blanchard, vice- 
president; H. P. Spencer, cashier. 

Columbia Trust Company — L. L. Elliott, president; Edward D. Silent, vice- 
president; Lester L. Robinson, vice-president; F. B. Braden, secretary and trust 
officer; L. D. Williams, assistant treasurer. 

Commercial National Bank — W. A. Bonynge, president; Joseph Burkhard, 
vice-president; Philip L. Wilson, vice-president; Newman Essick, cashier; R. S. 
Heaton, assistant cashier. 

Equitable Savings Bank — W. J. Washburn, president; W. H. Booth, vice- 
president; P. F. Johnson, cashier; R. T. Jones, assistant cashier. 

Farmers' and Merchants' National Bank — Isaias W. Hellman, president; J. 
A. Graves, vice-president; I. N. Van Nuys, vice-president; T. E. Newlin, vice- 
president; I. W. Hellman, Jr., vice-president; Charles Seyler, cashier; Gustav 
Heimann, first assistant cashier; John Alton, assistant cashier. 

Federal Bank -W. R. Clark, president; J. S. Kuns, vice-president; Owen 
McAleer, vice-president; James H. Goodhue, cashier; John B. Rodgers, assistant 
cashier. 

First National Bank — J- M. Elliott, president; Stoddard Jess, vice-president; 
C. E. Bittinger, vice-president; W. C. Patterson, vice-president; John S. Cravens, 
vice-president; W. T. S. Hammond, cashier; A. C. Way, assistant cashier; E. 
W. Coe, assistant cashier; E. S. Pauly, assistant cashier; A. B. Jones, assistant 
cashier. 

German- American Savings Bank — W. S. Bartlett, president; W. E. McVay, 
vice-president; M. N. Avery, vice-president; Jos. D. Radford, vice-president; J. 
F. Andrews, cashier; R. P. Hillman, assistant cashier. 

Globe Savings Bank — Chas. A. Elder, president; Chas. Lloyd, vice-presi- 
dent; R. L. Cuzner, vice-president; W. D. Deeble, secretary; R. H. Morse, 
cashier; G. M. Derby, assistant cashier. 

Home Savings Bank — R. J- Waters, president; J. H. Bullard, vice-presi- 
dent; J. M. Hale, vice-president; O. J. Wigdal, cashier; A. M. Young, assistant 
cashier; F. L. Thompson, assistant cashier. 

International Savings and Exchange Bank — John Lopizich, president; Jules 
Viole, vice-president; John Castera, vice-president; Leon Escallier, vice-president; 
M. Orsatti, vice-president; W. S. Pollock, cashier; A. Vignolo, assistant cashier. 



ON CALIFORNIA. 153 

Japanese- American Bank — M. Takewara, cashier. 

Kimmon Cinko Golden Gale Bank — Y. Suzuki, cashier. 

Los Angeles Trust Company — J. C. Drake, president; WelHngton Clark, 
vice-president; H. W. O'Melveny, vice-president and counsel; Robert Wankowski, 
cashier; H. B. Kay, assistant cashier; Leo S. Chandler, trust officer; H. W. Un- 
derhill, assistant trust officer; J. K. Macomber, real estate officer. 

Merchants' Bank anJ Trust Compan}) — Mark G. Jones, president; Geo. B. 
Epstein, vice-president and secretary; Jas. Bastable, vice-president; N. Blackstock, 
vice-president and trust officer; Emanuel Cohen, cashier; Geo. E. Reid, assistant 
cashier. 

Merchants' National Bank — W. H. Holliday, president; Marco H. Hell- 
man, vice-president and cashier; W. L. Graves, vice-president; H. T. Newell, 
vice-president; Percy R. Wilson, vice-president; J. H. Ramboz, assistant cashier. 

Metropolitan Bank ^"^ Trust Company — Motley H. Flint, president; Frank 
M. Kelsey, vice-president; Jay Spence, cashier. 

National Bank of California — J. E. Fishburn, president; W. D. Woolwine, 
vice-president; R. I. Rogers, vice-president; G. W. Fishburn, cashier; C. W. 
Prollius, assistant cashier. 

National Bank of Commerce — F. M. Douglass, president; John Harlan, 
vice-president; John A. Murphy, vice-president; Charles Ewing, cashier; Henry 
J. Stave, assistant cashier. 

Pacific Savings Bank -Ralph Rogers, president; F. E. Yoakum, vice-presi- 
dent; Jas. H. Blanchard, vice-president; Lee L. Soule, cashier; M. E. Cary, as- 
sistant cashier. 

Park Bank — Perry W. Weidner, president; James C. Kays, vice-president; 
W. C. Durgin, vice-president; A. W. Ryan, vice-president; Wilson G. Tanner, 
cashier; H. L. Holland, assistant cashier; J. W. Kays, assistant cashier; H. E. 
Allen, assistant cashier. 

Security Savings Bank — J. F. Sartori, president; M. S. Hellman, vice-presi- 
dent; John E. Plater, vice-president; Chas. H. Toll, vice-president; W. D. Long- 
year, cashier and secretary; T. Q. Hall, assistant cashier; C. W. Wilson, assistant 
cashier; W. M. Caswell, assistant secretary; J. H. Griffin, assistant secretary. 

South Side Bank — J- V. Akey, president ; A. C. Winter, vice-president ; S. 
P. Divver, vice-president; F. E. Porter, cashier. 

The Southern Trust Company — Isaias W. Hellman, president; J. A. Graves, 
vice-president; H. F. Stewart, vice-president; John P. Burke, vice-president and 
manager; Philip Kitchen, cashier; Chas. W. Brown, assistant cashier. 

Traders' Bank — Philip R. Wilson, president; E. R. Brainerd, vice-president; 
J. M. Carpenter, vice-president; W. W. Jones, cashier; Thos. F. Cooke, assistant 
cashier; E. W. Deibler, assistant cashier; C. H. Havens, assistant cashier; A. B. 
McCord, assistant cashier. 

Union Exchange Bank — L L. Spencer, president; H. J. Haynes, vice-presi- 
dent; Benj. W. Marks, cashier. 

United States National Bank — Isaias W. Hellman, president; O. M. Souden, 
vice-president; F. W. Smith, cashier; R. B. Harris, assistant cashier. 



54 BURTON'S BOOK. 



Where Everlasting Spring Abides 



IN these March days there are somewhere near 1 00,000 tourists speeding in 
automobiles or vehicles drawn by horses or in luxurious palace cars on 

steam railroads or in as handsome cars on electric roads all through the 
southern half of California, rejoicing, reveling, boisterously happy in the sunshine 
of the country of everlasting spring. 

There are along the countries of Western Europe from Daunt's Rock east- 
ward to Venice and from Naples northward to Holland, about an equal number 
of American tourists shivering by poor fires with badly drawing chimneys, or 
standing with their noses pasted against hotel windows watching drizzling rain 
coming down to turn to ice upon the streets. 

If you are in any city in any of these countries in midwinter you will be 
told that it is warm spring weather all over Western Europe from Sicily to the 
north of Holland by the month of March. An occasional gleam of sunshine 
and a few bursting buds timorously peeping out of their shelter make all the 
springtime you will see until April at the best, and May at the worst. 

On the other side of the great continental divide of America eastward to 
the Atlantic there are 80,000,000 people all the way from the Gulf of Mexico 
to Hudson's Bay, shivering by big base-burner stoves, afraid to go out in the 
blinding snows that are driven by tempests over pretty nearly the whole of eastern 
America. 

Let us confess that March, 1 909, is in some respects peculiarly charming 
in this land where everlasting spring abides. The tourist crowds and the perman- 
ent residents of Los Angeles come flocking in from their trips to the country 
bubbling over with enthusiasm at the beauty of the landscape, the blueness of the 
sky and the exhilarating effect of the atmosphere. The zephyrs are charged to 
their full capacity with the very wine of life. The plains are spangled with 
poppies amid the emerald carpet that covers almost every square foot of the 
whole territory of Southern California. The mountains are hazy with a semi- 
purple light as peaceful and warm as an Indian summer in the Western States. 
The seas vie with the skies of turquoise hues and break in the gentlest ripples 
along sands as white and clean as snowdrifts. 

We have got in the habit of calling the sunshine, the pure air and the 
beauty of the landscape common things. Sir Walter Scott reproved his daughter 
at the breakfast table on a certain occasion for speaking contemptuously of people 
in humble life as "common." The kind-hearted philosopher and imaginative 
romancer said to the girl that all the best things of life were common, that the 
spring that bubbled from the rock was more precious than all the wines of 
France and Italy, that the dew sparkling upon the grass was worth more than 
all the gems dug from mines or brought from ocean depths, that the flowers 
which the hand of beneficent Providence sprinkled over the earth for the enjoy- 



ON CALIFORNIA. 155 

ment of every living creature were vastly more beautiful than all the pictures 
in all the galleries of the world. We are so accustomed to beautiful scenes, to 
refreshing airs, to calm skies, to sunshine and rippling waves in this country that 
we are prone to forget the inestimable blessing that these things constitute. It is 
only by being tired that one appreciates rest, and by being hungry that one 
learns the value of food. The tourists who know from recent experience what 
March weather means on the bleak plains of Nebraska or along the prairies of 
Illinois have more intense appreciation of these March days in this land where 
everlasting spring abides than those of us who have enjoyed such weather week 
in and week out, year following year for a couple of decades. 



May in Santa Cruz 



'The month of May. Bright shines the sun; 

The skies wear heavenly hues. 
A fairer day I seldom saw 

Than this at Santa Cruz. 

For hours I roamed upon the hills 

With Nature sweet to muse. 
While rippling waves break on the sands 

Below fair Santa Cruz. 

A thousand sprays hang low their heads. 
And blushes bright suffuse — 

A thousand petals on each spray- 
Roses of Santa Cruz. 

Azaelias wild bedeck the woods, 

And lupines of all blues. 
Such wealth of bloom is only found 

In woods of Santa Cruz. 

When summer comes and days are long. 

Your weary soul to amuse. 
You'll rarely find a place on earth 

To equar Santa Cruz. 

Ah, fairer flowers than these are found, 

A beauty more profuse 
Than all the roses on the hills — 

The girls of Santa Cruz. 



[Issued by Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.] 



LOS ANGELCS 

THE 

METROPOLIS OF THE 

SOUTHWEST 



Ilie Toorists' Wioto and Sommer Resort 

Itie tlomeseeliers' Paradise 

Ilie [uposition and (onveolioo City 



or THE COAST 



The Progressive City 

Of The Twentieth Century 
3anuarp, 1909 



Secretary Metcalf, when Secretary of the Department 
of Commerce and Labor, stated, that owing to the phe- 
nomenal growth of Los Angeles in population, the per- 
centages of increase generally used for estimating cannot 
be applied to this city. 



Write to the 

Cfjamtier of Commerce 

For Full Information 



We build by the mile! 28|/2 miles of new buildings 
1909 



AREA 

Sixty-one square miles; average ele- 
vation, 270 feet; population, 305,000; 
assessed valuation, city, $2G5,570,272. 

TAX RATE 

City, $1.25; County $1.04. 
BtlLDING PERMITS 

For the year 1908, 7373; cost, $9,- 
934,198. 

BANKS 

Commercial and Savings, 3G, total 
capital and surplus, $19,GG3,472; de- 
posits, $88,550,527. Clearances for 
1908, $505,588,756. 

cnijRcnES 

All denominations, 200. 
SCHOOLS 

Public school buildings, including 
State Normal, 83; teachers employed, 
lC-93; school children, enrolled, 39,352; 
miscellaneous private schools and col- 
leges, 35. The Polytechnic High 
School is equal to the best in the 
United States. 

LIBRARY 

Volumes in Public Library, 120,000; 
home circulation, 704,000; circulation 
per volume, 5.6 (third in U. S.) Be- 
sides, there are 22 other libraries in 
the city with 97,643 volumes. 

MJANLFACTURINO 

Manufacturing establishments of all 
kinds in the city, 1800; workmen em- 
ployed, 15,000. The value of manu- 
factured products in Los Angeles for 
1900, according to the United States 
census of that year, was $21,297,537; 
for 190-8, estimated over $55,000,000. 
COST OF LIVING SAME AS IN MIDDLE WEST 



Our Banks Carry 40 Per 



erected in Los Angeles in the past year. 
1909 



CAR SERVICE 

One of the best, if not THE BEST, 
electric systems, urban and inter- 
iirban, in the world. 

Street cars all electric, five systems, 
175 miles of track, city lines; intei'- 
urban lines, 676 miles; number of men 
employed living in the city, 3000. For 
pay-rolls and construction crews the 
companies distribute in Jl.os Angeles 
$150,000 a month. 

STEAM RAILWAYS ENTERING THE CITY 

Southern Pacific System; Santa Fe 
System; San Pedro, Los Angeles and 
Salt Lake Railroad. Number of men 
employed residing in city and vicinity, 
4800. For pay-rolls and construction 
crews the steam railroads distribute 
in and around Los Angeles nearly 
$600,000 a month. 

PARKS 

Public parks, 16; acreage, 3720; one 
of over 3000 acres, being the largest 
municipal park in the world. 

LIGHT and POWER 

Electric companies supplying light 
and power, 3; gas, 3. Electric power, 
$17 to $40 per H. P. per year. 

TELEPHONE 

Telephone companies, 2; subscrib- 
ers, 61,000. This is equivalent to one 
telephone for every five men, women 
and children in the city, or one for al- 
most . every family, placing Los An- 
geles, in this respect, far ahead of all 
other cities in the world. 

THEATERS 

Theaters, 15; amusement parks, 2. 



Cent Legal Reserve. 



1909 

HOTELS 

Best hotel accommodations in the 
country. Family hotels and lodging 
houses in all quarters of the city. Can 
take care of 60,000 people. 
FIRE PROTECTION 

Steam engines, 23; chemical en- 
gines, 2; hook and ladder, 3; hose 
wagon and combination chemicals, 25; 
1 tovf-er wagon; hydrants, 1500. 

WATER 

Abundant supply; owned by the 
city; 15c per lOCO gallons. 

riOURES FOR 1907-8 

Showing Some of the Products of the Territory 
Surrounding Los Angeles 
Citrus fruits, 30,000 carloads; vegetables, 
carloads — celery, 2000; cabbage, 850; to- 
matoes, 350; potatoes, 500; onions, 800; 
cauliflower, 400; nuts, 9000 tons; can- 
taloupes, 2000 carloads; raisins and dried 
fruits, 5000 tons; butter, 6,000,000 lbs.; 
cheese, 950,000 lbs.; eggs, 275,000 cases; 
flour, 400,000 bbls.; canned goods, 350,000 
cases; olives, pickled, 1,000,000 gals.; 
olive oil, 500,000 gals.; beet sugar 100,- 
000,000 lbs.; wine and brandy, 1,200,000 
gals.; beer, 210,000 bbls.; petroleum, 35,- 
000,000 bbls.; beans, 32,000 tons. Total 
valuation, including manufactured prod- 
ucts, $150,000,000. 

FLEL 
Petroleum, distillate, gas, coal, wood. 

COST 
Gas, 80c per 1000 feet. Electricity, 
9c per kilowatt hour. Petroleum. 
$1.00 per bbl. 

now WE GROW 
Population, 1893, 55,000; 1900, 102,- 
479; 1909, 305,000; post-office stamp 
sales, 1908, $1,089,493; increase of 81 
per cent in five years. Los Angeles 
leads all cities of the country in in- 
crease of postal business. 
CLIMATE IS NOT EXCELLED ANYWHERE 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



017 064 343 4 



